


bound to find a trace

by rosepetalfall



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't copy to another site, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosepetalfall/pseuds/rosepetalfall
Summary: Luke wakes up and he’s at home. It is hot and dry and the walls are white. There is the faint hum of vaporators outside.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [SassySnowperson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaticEntrance/pseuds/SassySnowperson), who was an incredible beta and cheerleader throughout. This story would never have been ready to post without her. 
> 
> Updates M/W/F.

What is home but a cradle/of the past?

\- Natasha Trethewey, “Prodigal,” _Monument: Poems, New and Selected,_ 115.  

* * *

Luke wakes up and he’s at home. It is hot and dry and the walls are white. There is the faint hum of vaporators outside.

Everything is right.  

“Hello, Luke,” says someone from the doorway. The voice hits him in the sternum.

Luke sits up and backlit before him is —

“Aunt Beru?”

She looks down at her hands, flips them palms up and seems to study them. “Hmm,” she says. Then she looks up and says, “No, not exactly.”

“I don’t understand,” Luke whispers.

“Oh, Luke,” she says — and that isn’t right, she isn’t she, she doesn’t _say_ , but still somehow they’re conversing. “Don’t you? It’s safe, see?”

Luke’s hands, he realizes — both of them, flesh and not ( _is that right?_ ) — are trembling. “Who are you?” he asks to whoever or whatever is wearing his aunt’s face.

“You know,” she says, voice calm like still water. “You’ve always known.”

* * *

“I can't understand,” Rey says, frowning. “Is Luke gone? There was a moment when I felt — but then . . .”

“He’s still here,” Leia says, back straight, gaze clear. “Barely, but . . . I know. And now, we’re going to go get my brother.”

* * *

“Am I dead? I don't remember dying,” Luke says. They are outside now, seated at Luke’s favorite gazing point by the house. The doubled dawn is creeping orange over the horizon. “I was —” But he doesn’t know how to finish.

There had been something — a girl maybe (a girl in white; a girl in gray; a message from the stars that itched under his skin until it couldn’t be ignored) — but it’s as distant and indistinct as the fragments of a dream upon waking.

“Breathe,” his guardian says. “Rest.”

Luke breathes. How can he not?

He has been listening to her-who-isn’t- _her_ his whole life, has been falling and trusting her to become wings. Has been running away, trying futilely to hide, knowing there is no place beyond the Force, knowing it is as constant and wondrous and unbelievable a presence in his life as his sister.

He doesn't know how to think about any of this, how to grasp it, so he asks the most immediate thing. “Why do you look like her?” And then, quickly, “Why do you look like _anything_?”

“Is this form disconcerting to you?” she — the Force — asks after a long pause. “I have never been a sentient being, but it seemed as if it would be comforting.”

It is relief and it is heartbreak and it is a familiarity that goes deeper than his veins. Somehow fitting then, for this, whatever this is.

“I still miss her,” Luke says. “My aunt.”

“Yes,” the Force agrees. “I know.”

Luke nods and turns back to the rising suns, feels the sands slowly growing warmer beneath his palms.

“You have been afraid,” the Force observes, too mild for such a pronouncement. “Here is somewhere you do not need to be afraid.”

“I don’t know if I deserve this,” Luke confesses.

“You all think so much in binaries, even when you attempt not to. You are one of mine and you sought solace,” the Force says. “That is all there is.”

* * *

“There’s really only the one place to land. I mean, with a ship this size,” Rey explains. “Do you see it?”

“I see it,” Poe agrees, from the co-pilot’s seat.

His back aches and his neck is stiff and his muscles are a collection of complaints. The Falcon’s not that large, when it comes down to it. He’s been sleeping on the floor of the lounge, sharing a torn and thinning quilt with C'ai, his knees bumping up against Connix’s shins, the sound of Rose’s raspy but even breaths the white noise that lulls his exhausted brain into dream cycles.

Out below the Falcon’s front viewport is a deep blue ocean and a craggy island suddenly rising out of the depths. This world looks nothing like D’Qar, nothing like Yavin, nothing like Thaela where the temple had once been.

It is beautiful but harsh, uncompromising. Maybe something like Tatooine then. (In the first months after the massacre, Poe had thought, had guessed, that Luke would be on Tatooine, if he was anywhere. Poe had been wrong. But then again, maybe it had never been a guess so much as a hope, a longing, for Luke to be alive and somewhere that meant beginnings, however improbable.)

“Let’s bring her down,” Rey declares.

“Beginning landing procedures,” Poe agrees, blinking his way out of reverie.

He’s never been known for daydreaming. Back at the Fleet Academy, his instructors had commented on his tendency to hyperfocus. An asset and a weakness rolled into one. Commander Relan-Deyi had told him not to let his emotions guide that tendency too much, that if he could learn to keep the bigger picture in mind, he might just have the discipline for command one day.

She’d looked almost comically resigned when she’d said it, maybe because she’d really called him in to reprimand him for a prank that’d gone off rather more successfully than expected. When he’d recounted the whole thing, exaggerated for effect of course, in a letter home, he’d imagined Mamá laughing and Papá sighing.

He thinks if Mamá were alive and Papá knew the things Poe has done in the last week, he would have broken their hearts.

“Oh,” Rey says, a toothy smile breaking out as the rising winds splatter moisture across the viewport. “It’s starting to rain again. It does that a lot,” she informs him. “It’s very impressive.” She pauses. “Or I think it is.”

“Rain sounds nice,” Poe says, and it does. Poe grew up on a moon blanketed in cloud forests and the hollow places in his bones long for mist and the cacophony of birds half-hidden in the canopy. “Alright, landing gear down. You take her in nice and easy, okay?”

* * *

Luke is fixing a vaporator. And waiting.

He’s got that swirling sense of anticipation in his stomach, like before a raid on an Imperial outpost or when he was a kid and he just knew there’d be a sandstorm coming.

Something or someone is on its way. He doesn’t know what, but it’s very important. (There is a girl in white; there is a girl in gray; they are looking for someone who has been gone a long, long time.)

“Why is no one else here?” he asks the wind. “That doesn’t make sense.”

The wind doesn’t answer. It never did, of course, but Luke talked to it anyway, during the off-seasons when they didn’t have any droids around. Droids were better because they could talk back, but the wind was constant.

“Expecting someone, Luke?” asks a voice asks. Luke turns around. It’s a man with red-blond hair and blue eyes. His robes are tattered, like he has spent too many long years fighting the sands. Luke doesn’t recognize him but no, that isn’t true, he _does_. The man looks almost like he did in the news holoreels from the Clone Wars. Luke had hunted them down, after Ben was born but before anything else.

“You _left_ ,” Luke accuses. “I still needed you and you weren’t there!”

Obi-Wan clasps his hands together in the wide sleeves of his robes. It makes him look impressive, impassive, like the marble statue of the goddess Justice that sits — no, _sat_ , now — outside the Senate Halls on Hosnian Prime.

“I didn’t leave,” Obi-Wan says. “All things are found in the Force.”

“We’re _dead_ and you’re giving me platitudes?” Luke shoots back.

“That's not how I would describe the situation,” Obi-Wan says.

“Of course not,” Luke replies. “You took a pretty creative approach to the truth when you were alive, and we both know that didn’t really change when you died.”

He’d thought he’d walked far enough past this particular anger that the dust of it no longer clung to him, but maybe it’s just been dormant, lingering, waiting for the right moment. (This is what Luke understands about his father: one anger can stoke the embers of another, until the horizon itself is ablaze.)

Obi-Wan just stares at him, frowning. “Why are you so certain you’ve died?”

“What else is this supposed to be?” Luke asks.

Obi-Wan looks around. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he says. “The Force is infinite. I’ve given up the assumption I can understand more than a fraction. All this is remarkably like Tatooine though. You couldn’t have remembered the heat as a tad less intense?”

“Maybe I just wanted to go home,” Luke says.

Obi-Wan, abruptly, looks terribly tired. He sits down heavily, on a sand-dusted bench that wasn't there a moment ago, that shouldn't be there at all. He drops his head, bringing one hand up to rub at the back of his neck.

“How did you expect me to go on alone?” Luke whispers. It shouldn’t be enough to carry, but maybe here _shouldn’t_ doesn’t exist, because Obi-Wan looks up at that.

“Luke,” Obi-Wan says, quiet, frowning. “You were never alone.”

(His sister, somewhere, always, his sister, but it was the whole galaxy that needed her.)

“There were thousands of you once,” Luke says. “And you asked me to rebuild, just me. I was only one person and I _tried_. I wasn’t ready. I knew that, but I started the training temple anyway and I got them all killed.”

Luke’s legs feel weak, not up to the task of holding him up, so he slides himself slowly down to the ground, back against the vaporator.

“Ben — he kept getting further and further away from me,” Luke says, forcing it out. “Sometimes it was like we didn’t even have a single language in common.”

Obi-Wan intertwines his fingers and nods. “I know. I do have some sense of what might have been like,” he says, a twist of irony in his eyebrows.

“I wanted so much to be like you. Maybe I did that too well,” Luke says, fingers digging into the sand by his thighs.

“Perhaps you did,” Obi-Wan says. “And perhaps I should have taught you differently. Maybe we always armor our students against our own mistakes and not the ones they will make. A fallacy of care.” His gaze is distant, off to the horizon, but then he refocuses, blue eyes meeting Luke's. “But, Luke, I watched over you your whole life. Did you think death would stop me?”

“I needed you so many times in those years and you didn’t come,” Luke responds, hands curling into fists. “You could come back to tell me I needed to kill my own father, but you wouldn’t come back to help me keep your namesake?”

Obi-Wan sighs. “The rules of it are obscure to me, Luke. It isn’t at will, exactly. You ought to consider that maybe it was _we_ who needed you, when you were young. And then you were on your own path. It seemed best, I suppose, to let you pursue it. You saw our mistakes and you were so determined to do better.”

Luke swallows. Shifts the subject. “Do you and Father talk, now?” Luke asks. He saw them together only the once, on Endor.

“Now,” Obi-Wan echoes. “I think you’ll find the concept of time doesn’t really work here.”

“Well, the fact that you look twenty years younger than before gave me a hint,” Luke shoots back. (He wonders if he looks as young and lost as he feels, if Obi-Wan sees Luke as Luke does right now, with waves of blond hair falling in his face and the same two hands he was born with, as if death has trapped him at the moment just before everything changed.) “Do you and Father talk?”

“Anakin and I have made our peace,” Obi-Wan says, slowly. “We were . . . I had no memory of my birth family. The Order was all I knew. And I loved it. And I loved Anakin. That isn't something I could ever forget, or — deny.”

“Do you forgive him?” Luke asks, looking down at his knees. “After all the things he did?”

Obi-Wan is silent for a long time. The wind fills the gap, loose sand grains swirling around their ankles. “Yes. Mostly,” he says, finally. “I wasn’t able to see him like you and your mother — I couldn’t hold them together, the boy I loved and Darth Vader. I couldn’t stand to. But you were right. He was both.”

“I don’t forgive Ben,” Luke admits. The burning bodies of his students, his friends, people who had helped raise Ben, taught him to fix speeders and teased him about his growth spurts, are an ache he cannot move beyond. “I love him, but I don’t forgive him. Is that hypocritical?”

“Understandable, I think. Besides, we cannot control the choices of our students,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “Much as we might wish.”

“They grow beyond us,” Luke says, echoing — who? Master Yoda. His shins sting a little, with remembered raps.

“And we cannot know how,” Obi-Wan agrees.

“But do you wish you’d been different, though, as a teacher?” Luke asks. “I do.”

“There are things I would have done differently,” Obi-Wan says with a bone-deep sigh. “If I could do them again. Of course there are.”

“Regrets don’t dissolve in the afterlife, huh?”

Obi-Wan smiles, a touch sardonic. “That hasn’t been my experience thus far, no.”

“So, then, what happens next?” Luke asks.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Yoda wasn’t wrong,” he says, “you’re always dreaming yourself somewhere other than where you are. Luke, you need to think — why are you _here_?”

“Why am I here?” Luke echoes, puzzled. Surely that’s one thing he already knows the answer to.

But once again, there is no one to hear him but the wind.

* * *

“He’s that way,” Leia says, pointing. Poe follows the line of her finger up, and up.

“Right,” Poe says. “Of course he is.”

Leia glances over and smiles, like a shared secret. The familiarity of it disarms Poe, even now, after he’s given the Resistance his tears and his pride and the central years of his life.

During the time Poe had come to know Luke, he barely ever saw Leia, who circulated in echelons so far above him that Poe had hardly known how to imagine them. But it was her speeches he’d grown up on, her name he’d invoked in mess hall debates, her conviction that pulled him away from a life that had made his father proud, a life that would have let him return home to light a candle for his mother at Remembrance each year. Sometimes it’s still surreal to be held in her confidence.

Rey’s already starting to climb, the pale rain starting to settle in darkening splatters on her poncho. She turns around and looks down, impatient and quizzical.

“You might be able to just traipse up there,” Leia says with a smile, “but we need to make a plan.”

“You’re going to need me,” Dr. Kalonia says baldly, stepping forward. “And I need her,” she says, pointing at Rose. “Some of these pilots know enough about how to keep this thing flying,” she nods dismissively at the Falcon, “but she’s the only one I trust with my equipment.”

Rose smiles and clasps her hands in front of her, like she doesn’t know what to do with the roundabout praise.  

Leia nods. “And we’ll need blasters. Just in case.”

“Then I’m coming,” Poe says. Grits his teeth against the possibility of a denial — he has not been punished, because there are so few of them left, but he should be.

“Of course,” Leia says, instead. Her grace is somehow always a surprise.

Finn’s eyes flicker between them all and then he announces, “Me too.”

“That’s enough of us,” Leia decides. “We’re mounting a rescue of sorts, not invading this island.”

So they gather supplies, sling backpacks over their shoulders, fit on holsters.

“Comm us in a half hour if you haven’t heard from us before,” Poe tells Connix as they’re about to depart. “And shoot anything that isn’t us.” Then he amends quickly, “Not those caretakers Rey told us about. And not any friendlies. There’s a chance that some of our people might make it here, that they might have gotten the last coded beacon we sent out.”

“So. Shoot if it’s the First Order,” Connix says dryly.

“That’s a good rule,” Poe agrees. “Mostly.”

Connix eyes the shore. “What about the birds?” she asks. “Our food stores aren’t going to last very long.”

Chewbacca roars.

“Not the birds,” Connix agrees blandly.

They trudge upwards, against the wild wind and rain. If Poe had to guess, he’d say they’ve landed during what passes for spring here, and that gnaws uncomfortably at his gut. (Because he remembers Luke like this: his eyes closed, his face tipped up toward the harvest-warm sun.)

Rey outpaces them all, pausing periodically to turn around and urge them on.

“He’s in here,” Rey says finally says, beckoning. It feels like they’ve been hiking for ages, though Poe knows it hasn’t been more than two hours, based on their scheduled comm check-ins with Connix.

In front of them is an entrance to some kind of open cave. Rey leads the way in, Rose trailing at her heels, neck craned out in curiosity.

“That’s really him. That’s Luke Skywalker!” Rose exclaims, panting slightly and pointing to the ground.

Poe shoulders past her through the narrow entryway, feeling very far off from himself.

And she’s right — there he is: Luke Skywalker.

He doesn’t look like he did on Crait, like he’d stepped straight-backed and self-contained out of a story. Or he does, just a bit, as much as he ever did. But his hair is lighter and longer and his clothes are worn and mended.

And he’s so very, very still, laid out across a mat on cold stone.

Poe can’t move. He wants to take those final steps, to sit beside Luke and stroke his hair, whisper desperate assurances and feel the warmth of his breath. But suddenly, his legs feel leaden, weighed down by the lost years between them.

Rey clearly has no such compunctions. She’s already kneeling down and prodding Luke on the shoulder. “Luke? Wake up!” she close to yells. “I know you’re there!”

“Why are we yelling?” Finn asks, coming through the entrance. “What is happening?”

“Finn, this is my brother,” Leia says, walking in behind him and coming to sit by Luke’s side with a small, private smile.

Finn nods, clearly at a loss. On the other side of Leia, Rey is still shaking Luke’s shoulder.

“Luke!” she calls. “Get up!”

“Get out of the way,” Kalonia says, pushing past Poe. There’s probably enough room in here that she doesn’t need to, but Poe moves anyway, instinct overcoming the cold, unwelcome shock binding his torso. Poe’s been serving long enough that his unconscious muscles even know — when the medic’s running, clear a path.

Kalonia is brisk, settling herself and her equipment on the ground. “He’s still breathing,” Kalonia observes, leaning in over Luke’s body. “I need to do scans.”

“I know he’s alive,” Leia says, cutting through Kalonia's burgeoning professional run through. “Major, I don’t need a machine to tell me that. I just need you to find a way to wake him up.”

Kalonia nods. “Let’s see what we can do,” she agrees.

Poe finds that his hands are trembling slightly. He crosses his arms, suddenly very aware of Finn’s considering gaze.

* * *

It is hours or days or no time later at all and Luke is still at home and he is alone again. There is a voice or maybe two voices (there is a girl in white; there is a girl in gray; their stubborn brown eyes pulling at him) — calling, calling. But listening for them is like trying to chase down an echo in Beggar’s Canyon. Like ghosts.

“Is that from me?” Luke asks. “Is that from you?”

The Force shrugs and smiles. “Someone who loves you,” she suggests.

“Is Yoda that cryptic because of you?” Luke asks.

The Force laughs and it is like every golden day Luke ever experienced, every welcomed smile that he tucked away into his memory, all at once.

“If you want to know who it is, all you have to do is search,” the Force says, nodding out towards the dunes, the perfect arc of the sky, brilliant with the promise of sunset.

Luke shivers, suddenly reminded of all the warnings Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru ever gave him — _don't go out when dusk is coming because the desert is indifferent and will eat what it's offered_.

“Luke,” he hears — his sister, of course his sister, how could he not have known? “Luke, I’m here now.” There’s movement around her, Luke can feel it, but then it all fades away again.

The Force looks at Luke, wearing his aunt’s eyes, scrutinizing. “Later, perhaps,” she says, and is gone.

* * *

They don’t manage to wake Luke up, not that first day, not when the little caretakers Rey mentioned bustle in and start yelling, not when they slowly navigate the floating stretcher down and down, back to the Falcon.

They don’t manage to wake Luke up the entire first week, as they make their clandestine, halting way from one backwater Outer Rim watering hole to another.

Kalonia walks around the Falcon, which feels increasingly too small, tapping at her collarbone and muttering frustration to herself. It feels like every other day, she has some new scheme to test on Luke's unresponsive body.

Today, ten days since they found Luke laid out on that stone floor, Kalonia brings out two electro-conduits and holds them up. “I don't usually like to do this on humans,” she says. “But I think this is the next step.”

“Do we have to do that?” Poe asks, wincing prematurely.

(“I was electrocuted once,” Luke had told him one afternoon early on in Poe’s SystemSec tour, as they trudged out to inspect the temple’s boundary fence. “It’s not an experience I would recommend.” Then he’d deliberately handed Poe thick protective gloves and Poe had taken them with a minimum of eye-rolling. It was years later that Poe first saw Luke’s bare back, the faint, branching lightening scars traversing their way across and down, like exposed roots. In that moment of first seeing them, Poe would have burned cities and rebuilt them anew with his own hands, if meant he could erase whatever pain had put them there.)

“Look, I’m trying what I can,” Kalonia says, grim. “There are only so many options I can manage without a proper medical facility and equipment.”

Leia shakes her head. “Skip this one,” she says.

“It won’t work anyway,” Rey says, simultaneously, and then she reaches up to rub at her eyes with the back of her hands. It startles Poe into seeing her as child, for a moment.

“Then tell me what will,” Kalonia says.

* * *

The voices fade in and out. Sometimes he knows them — his sister, often, and the girl from nowhere, most frequent of all. Sometimes it is clear and distinct, Leia coming to him as he’s tinkering with a vaporator or observing the scorpions skittering along, but mostly it's muffled. More impressions than sounds.

Leia is always certain. Rey — her name is Rey — yells. Luke imagines her with curled fists on her hips.

Mostly though, Luke is alone, here, in the home that made him.

It is quiet and it is restful. But it doesn't feel right, not anymore. The back of his neck is starting to itch. It's like he's living once more that undefinable, uncontainable yearning to _go_ that grew incrementally throughout his childhood until it filled his lungs like air.

He isn’t done here, doesn’t want to be done, but it’s time to start moving.

“How far does this go?” Luke asks, surveying the land. Out over his right shoulder would be the rest of the homesteads and then beyond that, Mos Eisley and Mos Espa. On the other side, the Dune Sea. If he started walking, would the world around him, so familiar and yet so empty of the people who made it so, just dissolve? Would he?

“You are free to find out,” the Force says. “This place is for you.”

Luke pauses for a moment and then nods. It is day and he cannot sit in such odd silence any longer.

When he turns around, he finds his T-16 hopper sitting there, not far from the entrance to the house. It's still got the same faded paint and scratches from a lifetime ago.

“I missed you,” Luke says, running his hand over the chassis, tempted to laugh. “Guess someone knows that, huh?”

He hops in and rests his hands on the controls for a moment, dizzy with memory. Then he closes his eyes, hears the wind call, and suddenly knows where he's headed.

It’s not long before another familiar, sun-bleached homestead emerges on the horizon. There's someone standing out in front waving a kerchief, flagging him down. A small, stout middle-aged lady, her graying blond hair done up in Freehold braids that crown her face. As Luke slides the speeder to stillness, he gets a better look. The woman has crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and a familiar chin, a refracted holo from out of the sparse family collection.

“Great-Aunt Ozmay?” Luke exclaims, jumping out. Of all the people he could have seen, he wouldn’t have expected her. She’s not his aunt, really. She was Beru’s mother, though. She made his baby clothes and taught him how to skin and butcher jerba and always, always intimidated him into immediate agreement every time she crossed her arms.

“You think I don't look like myself?” the woman herself asks, hands on her hips.

“You’re . . . younger,” Luke offers lamely. She looks like she did in the holo of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s wedding, though she's dressed in her familiar everyday garb.

“Well, I wasn’t always as old as when you knew me,” Ozmay says, flapping a hand impatiently. “Now come inside before that wind brings in any more sand. You know better than to dawdle.”

She turns around and heads down into the house and Luke follows, gawking at the walls. He can't possibly have remembered this place so well, but here it all is, the little dents and scratches filled with history.

Ozmay leads them into the white-washed kitchen, where there's a pot of cactus flower tea steeping. She pours out two cups and sets them down at the table, so Luke sits obediently.

“What did you do to that nose?” Ozmay asks, sitting and squinting across at him. “I know that wasn't what it looked like before.”

“Something did it to _me_!” Luke protests, cupping his mug to keep from touching his nose. It feels crooked but newly healed, like just before the battle on Hoth, before Dagobah, or Cloud CIty, or the truth. “A snow monster.”

“Snow?” Great-Aunt Ozmay says, eyebrows shooting up, leaning in over the table. “Now, you really did go far from home, didn't you?”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees, looking down at Ozmay’s windworn hands. She had died when Luke was fourteen, during harvest season. At the burial, Uncle Owen had held Aunt Beru’s hand in both of his the entire time, like he was holding her to this world, and Luke had to look away to keep control.

“Drink your tea. Then you tell me about snow,” Ozmay declares.

Luke nods, holding up the mug and breathing in the familiar scent. It's been years since he’s even seen a proper cactus. He didn't know until now how he’d missed them.

“I left when I was nineteen. Owen and Beru . . .”

“Yes,” Ozmay says, mouth set. Then, gentling a little, so Luke can see again the familiar features that repeat between her and Beru, she just nods. “I know.”

Luke swallows. “I joined the Rebellion. You know Ben Kenobi?”

Ozmay scoffs, “You remember a man who chooses live out in the Jundland Waste.”

“He was a Jedi,” Luke says. “So was my father. And then so was I.” Suddenly Luke frowns, a connection coming to him. “Did you know that? About my father?”

Ozmay purses her lips and looks down at her mug. The she shrugs and looks Luke in the eyes again. “Oh, years ago, Shmi said something like that. But isn't every mother's hope that their child walk free?”

“You thought she was lying?” Luke asks, a hot spark of anger in his chest.

“Not lying,” Ozmay says, “but maybe dreaming.”

“You knew, too,” Luke says, processing. Even if all Ozmay ever knew was that, it still came to fourteen years of lies. “And none of you ever told me?” Luke asks. “My whole life —”

“Well, you found out, didn't you?” Ozmay cuts him off. “Try to be sensible for once! It was for your protection. Beru and Owen thought if you never knew, then you might live out your life safe. And in one piece.”

Luke traces the back of his front upper teeth with his tongue. Flips his prosthetic hand over — it's got the burn revealing the tech beneath, but the synth skin’s still there; a physical dating of an incorporeal body.

“It didn't work,” he says.

“No,” Ozmay says. “I didn't think it would.”

Luke looks up, narrowing his eyes, trying to decode that.

“Little one,” Ozmay says, “anyone to look at you knew you weren't a farmer. Some people were born for the land. You were born for something else.”

Luke breathes out, slow, because she's right and seeing Ozmay again should be a gift, not a rending of his childhood.

“I was born on an asteroid,” Luke finally offers, trailing a finger around the rim of his mug. “We learned that later.”

“An asteroid,” Ozmay says, shaking her head a little. “Well, Shmi would have liked that, I bet.”

Luke looks up, weighs that. “I . . . have a sister,” he says, the truth tumbling out like a confession. “She looks a little like the holos of Grandma.”

(That was how Owen had always referred to Shmi for Luke, “your grandma.” She was a warm haunting throughout Luke's childhood, her not-quite smiling face captured in the holo that sat on Luke's bedside table, there since he was first brought home.)

“Show me,” Ozmay says, motioning impatiently.

Luke opens his mouth, baffled — he can do a lot of things but creating an illusion of another person is basically impossible, thankfully — and then he shrugs. Here, where time does not work, where voices speak from the sky, where the Force can take shape, why shouldn't this be possible?

“Yeah, so,” Luke says, frowning and concentrating, holding out cupped hands, “this . . . is my sister.”

And there she is, a holo capture in profile, laughing and clad in white, her looped braids swinging. This is how Luke likes most to remember her, giddy with joy the day the remains of the Empire officially declared an end to hostilities.

“Her name is Leia,” Luke says.

“A strong name,” Ozmay says approvingly.

“She’s a strong person,” Luke agrees.

He can feel Ozmay's gaze. He lets Leia’s image flicker out, despite the hollowness in his chest that follows.

“Snow is beautiful,” Luke tells Ozmay. “Awful to deal with, but beautiful. Sometimes when it's falling — it's like it changes how sound feels. Like everything settles.”

Ozmay hums, the way to respond to a story. “Finish your tea,” she says.

“Yes, ma’am,” Luke agrees, automatically.

They sit like that, quiet except for the ambient sounds of the desert, and it reminds Luke of memories he hadn't been aware faded — of sitting like this, Ozmay telling him, “You're certainly a talker, little one, but I can see you appreciate some quiet, too. Composes the mind.”

Luke doesn't think he understood what she’d meant, at that age. When he was quiet, it was because he was daydreaming. But he knows that he's never found a silence (not silent at all, of course, with the wind, the shifting sands, the speeder engines, the vaporators) like Tatooine's, since he left.

He drinks his tea and takes his fill of the quiet. The feeling that he will not have it much longer is building in his gut.

When he puts down his empty mug, Ozmay gets up from the table, telling him, “You clean your grandparents’ graves before you go.”

“Before I go?” Luke echoes, startled.

Ozmay nods. “I know that look. Same one Daila wore for months before she left home.”

Luke only ever met his Aunt Daila in person once, a few weeks after Ozmay died. She hadn't gotten the news in time to come home for the burial.

“I will,” Luke swears. It is the first time in a long, long time that he has made a promise. This one, at least, he thinks he can keep.   

* * *

It’s been twenty-three standard days since they found Luke and twenty-six standard days since — since.

There is no way for Poe to think about it, to describe the destruction of the Resistance, so soon after the heart of the Republic was ripped away (entire _worlds_ , gone). He imagines writing about what happened to his father, the way he always did before leaving the Fleet, and is left with a blankness. But of course Papá must know by now. Maybe not the whole, entire, terrible truth, but there is no way to miss that even the physics of the galaxy has changed, that now there are debris fields where there were once thriving planets.

Leia orders Poe on standard breaks, but he can’t stay asleep for more than five or six hours at a time, and his back aches from sleeping on benches and floors and over the holochess table that one time (“We could just weaponize that fucking table,” he’d moaned to C'ai a few hours after he’d woken. “That thing is painful.”).

This morning, Poe awakens early, his body too wired up to obey Kalonia’s firm order to sleep. They’re headed to another old Alliance output in the Outer Rim, an old, minor communications hub — another chance at contact with everyone who scattered after Starkiller. But there’s hours to go yet. There’s nothing for him to do right now but wait and Poe has never had any talent for that.

He wishes for a firing range, or somewhere to run, or dirt to sink his fingers into. Anything to keep his mind from pulling back up the images — the bomber fleet exploding, Kylo Ren’s outstretched hand reaching into Poe’s mind, Luke standing, feet planted, against a whole army of artillery just to give them time to run.

Mostly Poe wishes for his own fucking ship back. And maybe a shower that isn’t being shared by dozens of people.

Since he can’t have any of those, he slips into what’s passing for a med bay — just repurposed quarters — on the Falcon and sits. He hasn’t really managed to _say_ anything to Luke yet, not anything more than a few hurried wishes squeezed out of his throat, a few bitten-off angry questions that of course went unanswered.

But he comes, when he can. It’s quiet here, maybe the only quiet place on the Falcon. So he opens his datapad and begins to write.

Some time later, he’s pulled out of his head by someone clearing their throat.

“Poe?” Finn asks. “Are you, uh —”

“Just . . . writing letters,” Poe says, putting down his datapad. He can’t send them, can’t risk the exposure even to let parents and partners and family know that their beloved ones died bravely (that Poe couldn’t see past the blood-call to tear it all down).

Finn nods and sticks his hands in pockets. “Any reason you're doing that in here?”

Poe shrugs. “He isn't such bad company. Not so great at holding up his end of the conversation right now,” he shrugs, leaning back with an old insouciance he doesn't think he's really felt since before Tuanul. “But that's alright. Kind of a nice change of pace.”

“Uh-huh,” Finn replies, dubious. But then he pulls up the other chair and settles in. He stares at Luke for a long beat, frowning, and then turns back to Poe. “So, but, how’d you even know him?” Finn asks, nodding towards Luke’s still form. “I thought he disappeared years ago.”

“Leia and Han and he knew my parents, during the Civil War,” Poe says. Maybe one day historians will see it all as one long war, the Clone Wars into the Civil War into this, the decades of peace that raised Poe nothing but a punctuation mark holding them together.

“They kept in touch a little, when I was a kid,” Poe continues. “Sent letters, packages, that kind of thing. Luke opened the training temple around the time I was at the Fleet Academy. And then my second posting out of the Academy was a System Security and Defense tour in the Thaela system.”

Finn shrugs his lack of recognition. Poe still has so many questions about the First Order, about what Kylo Ren shared with them, but for as much as they need to know, he’s not sure he wants to hear. Finn knows Luke Skywalker as a legend (and now an unresponsive but breathing body), but he doesn’t know where Kylo Ren slaughtered his own old friends.  

“That’s where the training temple was. Thaela Two,” Poe explains. “Everyone posted to SystemSec was broken up into into these smaller units that got assigned planets or moons or continents, for community outreach. And the temple was in our area. It was me and Jess Pava and Ello Asty. You never properly met them, I guess.” Jess and Snap and dozens of others are still on the list of people they haven’t located. Poe hopes — prays in a way he hadn’t known was in him — that means they’re safely to ground.

“We used to go by the temple pretty much every week, because it was that and one city on our area of the continent,” Poe says. For a moment he’s back walking up the dirt path for the first time, trying not to catch Jess’s twitchy-excited anxiety.

“But community . . . outreach?” Finn asks, squinting a little. “Was there unrest? Were you protecting them from something?”

Poe seesaws his hand. “After the Empire, there were a lot of systems that didn’t like the idea of the galactic government even having a standing military.”

“I know _that_!” Finn says, impatient. “That’s why it was so —” he cuts himself off, setting his mouth in a firm, unhappy line.

“Well, we were supposed to ground ourselves in wherever we were posted. Understand what they needed for planetary defense. Liaise with the local troops, that kind of thing. Hearts and minds, you know?” Poe says.

Finn gives him a look.

“Or . . . not,” Poe concedes. “Anyway, the idea was that at the end of the day, we would know the locals, the locals would know us, and the Fleet would know the whole Republic better.”

Finn’s eyes narrow and he nods. “So you were spying?” he asks, thoughtfully, like that’s a sensible thought.

Poe whips his head up. “No!” It’s too close for comfort though. They were too young and Academy-molded for the implications to seriously cross their minds, but Poe sees it now, that the Republic wanted eyes on that temple.

“So what _did_ you do, when you went?” Finn asks.

“Drank a lot of tea?” Poe offers, thinking of sitting at the wide wooden table with sensible, saffron-skinned Rona, who’d been a war orphan and then a medic, who’d come to find Luke herself and made herself into the backbone of the temple.  And Za’im, the youngest, still round cheeked and giggly, who used to try to wheedle sweetmeats and candy out of them when the adults weren’t looking. All of them, and Ben, gangly and dark haired and ever more reticent, ever more absent. “Jess played holochess with them. Ello loved the kids. There were a couple of younger ones. I used to help out with their vegetable garden. My family grew fruit and produce on our land, back on Yavin.”

“Were there a lot of them, at the temple?” Finn asks. “People . . . people like Rey?”

“You know, I think Rey might be sort of one of a kind,” Poe says, unable to bite down on his smile.

Finn clears his throat and rolls his shoulders back, flustered, so Poe gives him a reprieve. War alone is confusing enough, without what might be falling in love, with whoever, however many times.

“But, yeah, there were . . .” Poe closes his eyes, remembering, determined to get this right. (He has so little tangible evidence he ever knew them all, loved them all, mourned them all, so his fallible memory must serve.) “There were eighteen of them, including Luke, when I saw them last.”

“Eighteen people,” Finn says, shaking his head. “The second Jedi temple was eighteen people and a vegetable garden. That is . . . not what we were told.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Poe agrees, looking down at his hands.

A long, unrestful beat of silence reverberates between them.

“You eat yet today?” Poe finally asks.

“Have _you_?” Finn shoots back.

Poe clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I have, in fact. Because I’m a high-functioning person. But I could stand to eat again, if you haven’t. Just as long as it’s not bar rations.”

“They’re not that bad,” Finn offers with a half-hearted shrug.

“Oh, buddy,” Poe says, shaking his head. “No.”

Finn rolls his eyes. “Well, anyway, let's go,” he says, getting up. “It's too quiet in here.”

Poe nods and levers himself out of his chair. When he and Finn reach the mess, they find Connix, Rose and C'ai hunched conspiratorially over a table, something clutched in their hands.

“Is that _bread_?” Poe asks, grabbing out for a slice, and sitting by C'ai.

Rose tilts her face up towards Finn and pats the empty space beside her on a bench. Finn smiles back immediately and sits, but seems concerned. Poe can understand — Rose maybe shouldn't be doing all the running around she is, this soon into her recovery, but she's needed, and more, it's good for morale to see her up and about, even smiling. But then, fresh food after three weeks in space with low reserves of everything is worth smiling over.

“Where did this even come from?” Poe asks, taking a bite. The bread is soft and nutty and faintly honeyed-sweet, almost enough to make his eyes drift shut involuntarily.

C'ai tilts his head towards Connix, who leans back, her limbs settling into a proud lounge.

“I am an excellent resource manager,” she says.

Rose hands Finn a slice — he holds it up and inhales the scent, then takes a large, tearing bite — and nods vigorously, adding, “And an amazing haggler. When we were at that market on Ylpiv III —”

“Wait, have we had bread for _three_ days?” Poe asks, eyebrows shooting up. He’s aware he's been dropping non-essential details but surely people would have been talking about fresh bread.

“We’ve had flour, of a kind,” Connix shrugs. “It just took us two days to find someone with the time and skill to make bread from it. Turns out Sei-Zylin’s family ran a bakery, back home.”

Rose looks up and suddenly waves, calling, “Rey! Come sit!”

When Poe turns around, Rey is standing in threshold with a hesitant, uncomfortable smile. “We have bread,” he says, holding up his bitten into slice. Rey grins and lopes over immediately.

“Bread?” she asks. “Where did it come from? Did you get _casta_ packets?”

Connix shakes her head as she tears off another slice for Rey. “No, it's all fresh,” she says.

Rey’s brown eyes are wide and eager.

“Rey, hey, I had something I wanted to tell you!” Rose announces, almost bouncing in her seat. “When I was helping with the medical equipment, Harter said something I thought maybe would help you? And the General.”

“Harter?” Poe mouths to C'ai, who snorts and looks down. Poe’s known Kalonia nearly a decade and still doesn't have permission to call her by her first name.

“Yes?” Rey responds, shoulders oddly tense, clutching her bread.

“Well, so she doesn’t know how it works, really, but she did find this reference somewhere about Jedi mind-healing techniques. And it said that sometimes, if someone’s unconscious and has been for — well for a long time,” Rose says, setting her mouth and marching on, “you can guide them back, um, through their dreams.”

“Guide dreams?” Rey echoes, slowly, narrowing her eyes and looking off somewhere upwards. Poe stills, a shiver branching up his spine.

“Yeah, so we don't really know what they meant, because that was the only fragment that was preserved when the Empire purged the med archives,” Rose says, faintly apologetic. “But I thought maybe you would get it.”

Rey nods, a slow, slow movement. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe if you can do it on purpose,” she mumbles, low enough that Poe has to lean in to hear her.

“Maybe if you keep talking to Luke, but encouraging him to reorient himself?” Rose offers. “Like when you're resetting an old navigation system. You gotta keep giving it commands until it re-adapts.”

Rey’s eye are distant and she nods slowly. “Dream talking,” she says, half under her breath. Now her eyes drift down and left and then suddenly she’s getting up from the table, chair scraping along the floor.

“Wait, are you leaving? You haven’t even —” Finn says, half-rising with her.

“Thank you. For the bread,” Rey says, unhearing. She grabs out for another slice and then goes running out of the mess.

“She didn’t finish eating,” Finn says, sitting again, his face falling.

“Did, uh, did Kalonia think it would work, with Luke?” Poe asks, feeling his heartbeat in his throat.

“She said it might, if we could figure out what exactly they meant,” Rose shrugs. “I feel like it would!”

* * *

Luke gets down on his haunches to clean Cliegg and Shmi’s graves. He does it all slowly, carefully, like it’s their death anniversaries. Cleaning graves on Tatooine has always been a war of attrition, not waged in the hope of any permanent victory against the entropy of sand. It is undertaken instead in the constant knowledge (the Freehold can all trace their lines back to shackles) that every free breath and every free death on Tatooine is an improbable and weighty thing, worthy of respect.

When he’s done, or at least when things are as neat as he’s going to get them, he presses a kiss to top of each headstone, the way he used to when he was just a child, copying Aunt Beru. Then he gets up onto his feet.

“I think I’m ready to go now,” Luke tells the wind.

Then suddenly, she’s standing beside him. “Good,” the Force says. “I agree.”

“But — how?” Luke asks, gesturing to the empty landscapes.

“This is _your_ journey,” the Force says. She smiles Beru’s smile and is gone again.

“What, am I just supposed to go to a spaceport? Hire a ride? We’re all dead. Credits don’t mean anything!” Luke calls after her, though she’s disappeared. Dematerialized. Whatever the term should be.

The wind whistles.

“You are not very helpful sometimes,” Luke yells, a futile closing statement delivered to the indifferent sands.  

“Guess it’s gonna be just you and me,” Luke informs the T-16.

He goes back in the house one last time, trailing his fingers over the walls, the tables, trying to etch them into his skin. On his way back out, he grabs a pair of storm goggles and a scarf, tosses a few provisions in a bag. He has that itching feeling that used to come to him before sandstorms and it’s best to be prepared. Then, ready as he can be, he hops into the T-16.

He points for Mos Espa and guns it. The land beneath begins to change, the mesas around him clicking into sight. As the familiar horizon starts to form, the sand beneath him begins to swirl, shifting against the sides of the speeder.

There’s no one around, but then suddenly, there’s a voice, someone new but naggingly familiar, coming from up over the next dune.

“I don’t even know why I’m here right now, really,” the voice says, faint, but growing stronger. Luke peers out against the storm-muddled sky, lifts a hand to shade his eyes. Is someone lost out there? (Is that possible?) “I could be sleeping, you know. Could probably use it,” and this is accompanied the sound of metal scraping along metal, though there’s none in sight. Just the brilliant, defiant desolation of the edge of the empty desert.

The voice is close; Luke’s chest aches oddly.

“But I guess — I guess maybe I’m ready to talk to you now,” the voice continues, wavering slightly. “I couldn’t really, before. I bet you’d’ve thought that was funny. Made some joke about how you’ve never known me to tongue-tied or something. You’re not as funny as you think.”

Luke ties up his scarf over his nose and mouth. The wind is picking up and it should be hard to hear, but somehow the voice is getting clearer.

“You know, when the news came out about the murders at the training temple, everyone thought you had to be dead. I was out on a border sweep with the rest of my squadron. Didn’t get the news until three days after it went out to the Republic Fleet. The base commander told us when we reported in,” the voice stumbles. “And I kept thinking about the last time I’d seen you and walking around the market with you and Rona and how Za’im kept wandering off, but you and Rona weren’t worried because you knew exactly where she was. I should have let you come to the transport hub with me. Or at least asked for a proper good-bye kiss, instead of just letting you kiss me on the cheek. I didn’t want it to feel so serious, like maybe I wasn’t coming back. I never even thought about anything happening to you.”

Luke knows, with a certainty that surprises him, that the speaker really is tired, can picture dark, disarrayed curls and softly slumped shoulders. There’s a name and a smile, too, but they hover at the edge of his knowledge.

“I left for the Resistance . . . nine weeks later?” the voice continues. “The squadron got cycled up for leave. We all went home, first, and then we never reported back.” There’s a long pause and then, in a sudden rush, “You were right, we’d already been talking about it. But after, I guess we figured the General had to need some decent pilots and we wouldn’t be wasting our time on ‘observe and report’ anymore.”

Suddenly, in the distance ahead, Luke sees a glint, the edge of a ship wing. He swerves around the hopper, heading for it.  

“I told my dad what we were going to do,” the voice pauses. “I still don’t know if that made it better or worse. He hated the whole idea of it but he still helped me pack. Told me to tell Leia that he was trusting her with me. As if I was ever going to say that to her —” the voice cuts itself off. “So, that’s part one of what you missed. There’s kind of a lot. But, um, I think that’s what I’ve got for tonight. This morning.”

Luke keeps going, chasing the faint outline of the ship. Around him, the sand swirls, gritty and confining — soon it will be like there is no world beyond the next step — but there’s something there, for sure. The ship, some kind of X-Wing, glimmers in the wind and heat, like a mirage, even though it’s offworlders mostly who see those. There and not there, like the voice.

“Rose says she heard talking to people helps their brains and I guess Kalonia agrees. But aside from what Leia can tell, we don’t even really know what’s wrong with you. We lost most our medical equipment, along with everything else,” the voice says. There’s a long pause; the ship  flickers violently, like a holomessage on a bad connection. “You’d like Rose. She thinks you’re going to get better. Maybe she knows something we don’t. She fixes things.”

The ship solidifies again, right in front of him, black and sleek and generations newer than the X-Wings Luke flew. Still, Luke knows he could pilot it, if he wanted to. It’s the wrong color and some of the details are off — it wouldn’t be a perfect second skin, but it’s familiar. Luke gets out of the T-16, compelled to close this final distance on foot.

“I wish you’d wake up. Leia needs you,” the voice says, hurried and hoarse and beseeching.  

“I don’t think I’m asleep,” Luke says, to the ship or the voice or maybe no one in particular.

The voice continues now, “I guess Kalonia’s going to come in to check on you in a bit. So I’ll go.”

Luke didn’t really expect the voice to hear him, but he finds himself disappointed anyway, rubbing at his collarbone to dispel the ache there.

“I’ll come back and tell you the rest, sometime,” the voice says. “Or . . . or you’ll wake up and you can ask me about it.”

“Wait! Don't go yet.” Luke calls out, before he knows himself that he’s going to do it. But his voice muffled in the now howling sandstorm. His hand — the flesh one — tingles oddly with a phantom sensation of touch and the man’s name comes to Luke with aching clarity. His name is Poe.

And wherever he is, his voice is gone.

Around Luke, the storm suddenly dies away, whispering out, revealing the black X-Wing in full. Luke steps forward and reaches out with his black-gloved left hand, rests it against the flank of the ship, just before the cockpit. It feels solid. Flight worthy. He rounds the nose of ship, peers under the belly, ducks beneath the wings, finishes his circumambulation.

The Force is standing there when he comes around, her eyebrows just slightly raised.

“Does it work?” Luke asks, of the X-Wing. He puts a hand on the metal, suns-warmed and battle-scarred.

“Do you think it works?” the Force asks.

“Yes,” Luke decides.

“Then yes,” the Force agrees.

Luke hesitates — this ship is swift and advanced and well-equipped. It has kept someone — not safe, but alive. But it’s not Luke’s.

“Can I have mine, though?” Luke asks. “I think this one belongs to someone else. I think he’d like to have it back, one day.”

“Perhaps,” the Force says, with a slight shrug.

The world shimmers and Luke has to shut his eyes against the brightness. When he opens them again, he’s alone once more. And it’s _his_ X-Wing sitting there, familiar like a limb, the same ship that survived sinking into the muck on Dagobah, the same ship that brought him back to Tatooine for the first time. The same ship that he cannibalized and sunk into sea.

“Well, alright,” he murmurs. Artoo isn’t here and that’s wrong, but the rest of it’s familiar. “Let’s see where we’re headed, huh, old friend?”

* * *

Four days later, all the flour is gone again, but they’ve reached the old Alliance outpost they were heading for. It’s absurdly out of the way, far beyond the interest of the First Order, and clearly meant for minimal staffing. The tech is run down, groaning when they try to boot it up, and everything’s a mess. It's absolutely forgotten and therefore —

“Perfect,” Leia declares. Then she turns around, hands on her hips. “Well, let's get to work!”

And that's exactly what they do. They clear away the heavy layers of dust and grime and damply growing moss, faces covered with makeshift masks. (At unpredictable flashes, it reminds Poe of burning the fields on Thaela, of burning the fields back home on Yavin, the close-fitting rebreather masks reducing all the familiar faces to an uncanny sliver of eyes, the shape of a nose.)

Those first few days are long and the physical work demanding. Poe’s hauling out equipment too old and corrupted to be of use, shimmying up wiring tunnels with Rose or Connix shouting instructions from below, hacking back overgrown vines resplendent with thorns.

And it is all, at last, something to do. Poe is at his best when he has a ship and pilots. At the moment, he has none of the former and too few of the latter. But now at least he can be useful again, can take his terrible, anxious energy and turn it into something.

( _Where is everyone who left D’Qar before them? Why haven’t they gotten in touch? Who but this paltry handful of revolutionaries is left to oppose the First Order?_ Buried deepest in the pulse of his blood: _Is Jess alive? Is Snap, is Kare?_ )

It’s the end of day six and Poe’s so beyond tired that his brain feels fuzzy and his limbs weighed down. What he really wants is an alcoholic drink and his father’s bantha steak and a proper _bed_. His creaking cot will have to suffice.

He’s only just let his eyes fall shut when there’s a knock on the door — the clang on the metal reverbates down the empty hall.

“Enter,” Poe calls, viciously hoping the person won’t do so at all. But when the door opens, it’s Finn and Poe immediately feels bad for ill-wishing him, even if it’d been an accident.

“Finn?” Poe asks. “Always happy to see you and all, buddy, but if this is a social call, can it wait?”

“Um,” Finn says. “No.”

Poe stares at the ceiling for a moment. “Okay,” he says, sitting up. “Hit me.”

“Rey just said we should come to the command center,” Finn shrugs. “And uh, I don’t think it’s . . . voluntary. She’s _very_ insistent.”

Poe momentarily fantasizes about falling back onto the cot, pulling his sad, deflated pillow over his head and pretending he didn’t hear Finn. But that’s not behavior befitting an officer or a Dameron, so he groans instead. “Right. You think this is an emergency, or could I have a second?”

“A second for what?” Finn asks, narrow-eyed. “You need to be conscious for this.”

“Exactly!” Poe says.  

Finn shoots him an unimpressed look and says, “Fine. I’ll see you in the command center.”

When he leaves, Poe scrubs at his face with his palms, running his finger tips just over the arch of his eyebrows and then standing. When he walks into the command center — sparse, stripped down, too small — he’s not even the last to enter. It takes several more minutes of shuffling and throat clearing before Leia holds up a hand and declares, “Alright, let’s listen to what Rey has to say.”

She nods then to Rey, who has her hands clasped in front of her. Rey swallows and nods.

“I’ve been doing some reading and I think I maybe I could talk to Luke,” she announces.

The ensuring silence is thick like fog.

“You do . . . already talk to him,” Finn points out, slowly, like he’s hesitant to make the point.

Rey flaps her hand. “No, no, I mean talk to him . . . in my head? His head?” She frowns and looks at Leia for some kind of confirmation. Poe follows her gaze, feeling the beginning of a headache pulsing at his temples. “His dream state?”

Leia rolls her hand at the wrist. “I understand even less of how to describe this than you do, Rey,” she says. “But tell us what you’re thinking.”

“It’s something Rose said,” Rey says, nodding over to her and Kalonia, “about what you found, with the Jedi mind healing? I’ve, um, I’ve been thinking about it and I’m . . . I’m pretty sure,” she frowns and shakes her head. “No. I know what they’re talking about. I’m not sure how it would work, with someone who isn’t conscious, but the talking to someone who isn’t there. I can do that.”

Poe bites his lip. “I’d love for that to work, Rey,” he says, stomach churning. “But how is that going to be different than what the General and Luke are able to do?”

“I don’t know,” Rey says, scratching at her forearm. “That’s the point, I suppose? That maybe it’s not. That kind of connection, it’s . . . a bit like tunnel between people. You can — collapse it, sort of. I think we need to —”

“Clear away the rubble,” Leia says, slowly. “Well, Luke never took the easy way if he could find a more complicated route.”

A flicker of a smile from Rey, and then she’s facing Leia, really only addressing her, though the rest of them are captive to the secret, “I think maybe I can do it.”

Leia nods. “If anyone’s going to have any luck getting to him, it’s going to be the two of us.”

Poe looks at the ground. Scuffs the toe of his boot into the metal floor. He believes that, too, but he wishes it were like the stories his Abuelo used to tell him, when Poe was a child and his parents were at war. In the stories, a kiss from the dashing hero was enough to wake up his true love.

“Okay,” Rey nods, a little wide-eyed.

Poe realizes suddenly, sinkingly, that she’s barely any older than Jess was when they were first posted to Thaela. Just about the age Enu and Ty would be, if they were alive. (When they got back to base, the holonews seemed to recycle the same clip of Enu’s father every few hours, him repeating, “I talked to her just two days before. She was fine! They were all fine. I don’t understand.”) He feels a little dizzy, with the thought.

Leia dismisses them all then, but points a finger at Poe, saying, “You stay.” When everyone’s filed out, C’ai shooting him a curious, slightly concerned look over his shoulder, Leia puts her hands on her hips and asks, “Well, Dameron?”

“Sir?” Poe responds. They don’t _not_ talk about Luke, but they don’t exactly sit in front the fire sharing memories either.

“We’ve got a new, hopefully temporary, base of operation. We’ve got a plan to get my brother back. What’s next?” Leia asked, starting to do a circuit of the command center. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

This is a test. But the only thing Poe has to offer is his own sincere, truthful longing.

“The rest of the Fleet, sir,” Poe says, trying to keep his voice even, shifting his stance to track her around the room as she moves. “The rest of the pilots and the personnel they were guarding. We need to find them.”

“And why didn’t they come find us on Crait?” Leia asks, coming to a stop.

“We were the largest contingent. After the contact drop leaving D’Qar, we don’t know what happened with them. Maybe they had squadrons after them. Maybe they ruled that the order to go to ground had to come first,” Poe offers, running through only a fraction of the possibilities that have run through his brain. “Or they couldn’t risk exposure. It’s like you said, as long as some of us are alive, so is the Resistance. They didn’t know about Rey or — or Luke, or any of it.”

Leia studies him, brown eyes sharp and searching. “Do you think they’re still alive out there?”

“Yes,” Poe says. It is a prayer, a hope, sustenance.

“Then we better get you a ship,” Leia declares. “Because you’re going to go get them for me.”

* * *

Luke hops out of his X-Wing and immediately shivers, from the cold and the visceral dislike. He’s got on the old orange flight suit and can feel the layers of heat-capturing fatigues he always layered beneath, but it’s still not enough. It never was, not for here. And, unfortunately, he’s quite sure he knows where here is. The landing bay is made of packed snow and he’s only seen that once before. He’d planned very much on never seeing it again.

“Of all the places in the galaxy,” he mutters, because the Force might be listening, is always listening, and he wants his complaint out there for the record.

But instead of a spoken answer, there’s a cough. That throws him off, pulls his attention to the rest of the landing bay.

Standing in a semi-circle a few strides away are Rogue Squadron. Not all the pilots who ever flew under that that sign, but all the ones who’d died flying with him, and after. They’re all in their bright orange flight suits and they’re all very, very young, like they were during the war, their war. Young the way Luke himself looks right now.

Luke gapes.

“Catch flies that way, Commander,” Janson says cheerfully.

“Right,” Luke says, recovering. “So. You’re here to tell me hell is real and we’re all there now?’ he guesses. They’re on Hoth, so Luke thinks that’s a pretty safe bet to make.

“Don’t look at us. Blame yourself. It was definitely your choice of locale,” says Wedge, shrugging, keeping his arms crossed.

The last time Luke saw him in person, it was on Chandrila, for Mon Mothma's funeral. It was a state affair, beautiful and symbolic and swarming with press. Wedge had been blank faced with suppressed grief, spine as stiff as his dress uniform. Later, after the burial, he and Leia had thrown themselves into a horrifically formal, vicious fight about democracy and legacies and whether the Fleet was responding appropriately to First Order aggression. Luke and Han had gotten drunk in a corner. Ben was there, but nowhere to be found. That would happen more and more.

But right now. Right now Luke is on Hoth-that-is-not-Hoth, surrounded by his dead comrades.

“Me?” Luke asks. “Why would I ever want to come back here?”

Wedge surveys their surroundings and announces, “Based on who we’ve got assembled, I’d say it's probably because this was the last time we were _your_ squadron.”

Luke swallows, grabs out for the side of the ladder up against his X-Wing for the solidity of it. “Okay,” he says, nodding quickly. “That was kind of harsh.”

Hobbie clicks his tongue, conciliatory, or smarting with him.

Wedge’s lips thin and he says with that familiar briskness he often fell into when uncomfortable, “It wasn’t meant to be.”

Luke thinks, sometimes, that some small part of Wedge never quite forgave Luke for not making the rendezvous after Hoth, for abandoning the cause and his pilots, even if he’d come back.

“I don’t know,” says one pilot, emerging out from behind Wedge’s shoulder. “I think that was a _little_ harsh. But really, Luke, you couldn't have called us somewhere nice? A beach would’ve been a good choice.”

“Dak Ralter,” Luke says, feeling his throat start to ache. Dak had only been nineteen when he went silent and cold at Luke’s back in their snowspeeder, dead at an age that ought to be have been a beginning.

“In the flesh,” Dak agrees with a grin, bringing up his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. “Or, well, not.”

“That’s terrible,” Luke chokes out, shocked into something like a hoarse laugh.

Janson comes forward, ruffles Dak’s hair, and says, “You know him. The infant’s got jokes.”

“Hey, Luke,” Dak says, shrugging Janson’s elbow off his shoulder and ducking away. “Ignore them. I’m glad to see you, even if the rest of these good-for-nothings,” he turns around to throw the word back at them all and receives general jeering in response, “are pretending otherwise.”

“Brother, why would you be _happy_ to see him here? It’s the end of the fucking line,” Hobbie declares.

But Luke only half-hears, caught up in his own forward momentum, and then tangled in a desperate, crushing hug with Dak. He feels so real, solid muscle and tickling hair.

“Oh, he gets hugs, just because he’s the baby?” Hobbie protests.

“We were having a _moment_ ,” Dak protests, as he pulls away. “Don’t be rude!”

“Don’t be _rude_?” Wedge echoes, eyebrows and intonation rising in unison. “And one day it’ll snow on Yavin.”

“Was that a challenge I heard, Ralter?” Janson grins.

Luke bites his lip and clears his throat. “How about it isn’t?” he offers. “And how about we get somewhere that isn’t this godsforsaken frozen landing bay?”

“Aww, isn’t this just like old times?” coos Janson.

“Move,” Wedge orders, pointing to the main passage.

Dak’s quickest, darting ahead and motioning them on, Wedge following in a steady stride.

“Mother of _gods_ , Luke,” Hobbie mutters, bumping shoulders with him as they hurry out of the open landing bay. “Are you sure you aren’t making it colder than it actually was?”

“I don’t know what colder than Hoth would be and I don’t want to know,” Luke says.

Hobbie glances sideways at him and gives a faint smile. “You still remind me of yourself,” he says, offering something of a puzzle.

“What does that mean?” Luke asks.

Hobbie shrugs. “Means what it means. A lot of things have happened since we saw each other last.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, because what other possible answer is there?

“But at least I can count on you to always fucking hate the cold,” Hobbie says.

“You know it,” Luke agrees, though it's quiet.

Janson beckons them over to the mess hall table the rest are already sitting around, Dak with his elbows on the table, Wedge leaning back. Hobbie grabs a chair, turning it around backwards and sits, wrapping his arms around it. Luke slips into the seat between him and Dak.

“Since we’re all here,” Janson says, pulling a bottle of Correllian ale from his bag and setting it on the table with a thump.

“The concept of time doesn't work here, but intoxication does?” Luke asks, finding himself doing the same irritated tongue click Ty used to imitate.

“Expand your imagination a little, boss,” Janson says, pouring a glass and pushing it across the table to Luke.

Luke stares at it. Nothing in any of the texts he’d managed to get translated ever intimated that what happened after death would be anything like this. But then again, maybe it’d been a Jedi trait to lack a certain imaginatory flair. They’d never seen Palpatine coming, either.

“Oh, come on, Luke, just take it,” laughs Jason. “What’s it going to hurt?”

“Not like we’re on duty anymore,” Hobbie observes dryly.

Janson pours out another four glasses in turn, adding, “We are _very_ much off duty.”

Luke meets Wedge’s eyes across the table. Wedge shrugs.

“Sure,” Luke says, shaking his head. “Why not?”

“There we go,” Janson grins.

“Sure you can handle all that?” Hobbie asks Dak solemnly, nodding at his glass of ale.

“Amazingly,” Dak says, cupping his glass protectively, “you are all _more_ annoying than I remembered.”

“Hey,” Luke says, tilting his head sideways. “Didn’t you just say you were happy to see me?”

“You are my favorite,” Dak says, with a serious nod. “But it’s kind of slim pickings.”

“So disrespectful,” Wedge says, shaking his head, only the upward twitch of his lips betraying his amusement. “We ought to demote you.”

“Little late for that,” Dak says, raising his glass and grinning, teeth flashing.

Luke flinches.

“What’s with the face, boss?” Dak asks, kicking lightly at Luke’s boot, smiling sunnily.

“It’s just — It wasn't funny to me. I left your body behind,” Luke says, choking on the hoarseness in his throat.

“Yeah, well, by that time so had I,” Dak says, tone still too light, though his smile’s disappeared.

Luke works his jaw. Dak had been his kid pilot, his responsibility, his to take care of. And in the end Luke had run and survived and left Dak’s corpse to be crushed into the snow by an Imperial walker.

“You kind of fucked up the Commander’s head by dying on us,” Hobbie says, conversationally.

Wes nods. “He got so lost he ended up missing the rendezvous point entirely, and _apparently_ crash landed in some swamp and had to be rescued by a tiny, ancient warrior,” he summarizes.  

“You are all so lucky you never met him,” Luke mutters. “He could have kicked all your asses.”

“So you say,” Wes grins.

Dak taps a finger against his glass. “Maybe you needed some better maps,” he says, looking at Luke, saying it in a bit of an undertone.  

Luke runs his tongue along his top front teeth. “Probably,” he agrees. He takes a drink and it burns down his throat, making him cough.

Wedge and Janson both laugh.

“Can’t even imagine yourself a better tolerance here, huh,” Wedge observes.

“Holy shit, Janson,” Luke manages. “What goes on in _your_ head?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Wes says cheerfully.

Hobbie shakes his head. “No one wants to know that,” he says.

Wedge raises his glass, saying, “I’ll drink to that.”

“Luke?” Rey’s voice suddenly booms from above, like she's being amplified, multiplied. Loud enough that it feels like the walls should be shaking with it, the ground moving. “Luke, can you see me?”

“Are any of you hearing that?” Luke asks, looking around frantically. “Can you hear her?”

“Hear who?” Wedge asks, eyes narrowing.

“Rey — she’s this kid —” Luke grasps for an explanation. “She talks to me.”

Dak looks at him, face tipped sideways, studying him with the same careful kindness he always gave the med staff, overworked and understaffed as they were. “Talks to you from where, Luke?” he asks.

To Luke and to everyone else who grew up in the Freehold, ghosts were not stories. And they were not to be ignored. So when Obi-Wan first came to him on Hoth, Luke had experienced no surprise. Maybe it was because he’d been wandering towards death’s gates in the snow, but being visited by his teacher had simply seemed right to Luke. So then, of course, why would Rey not speak to him and why would he not hear?

But he thinks of _what_ she’s been saying, what she’s been demanding, and of Leia’s steadfast assurances of her own presence, and of Poe’s voice cracking over the words ‘wake up.’ Abruptly, Luke knows what he would not allow himself to know before.

“I’m not dead like you’re dead, am I?” Luke whispers.

Dak leans in, loops an arm around Luke’s back, and shakes his head gently.

“Well, you were always kind of a weird one,” Wes says, but there’s a faint smile playing in his eyes.

“What happens next, then?” Luke asks, gripping the table.

Wedge sighs, taps two fingers on the table. “This kind of thing has always been your department. We’re not exactly experts, Luke,” he points out. “But I’m guessing it’s kind of up to you.”

“If I had to make a recommendation,” Hobbie says, “I would go with, you know, maybe stop being dead. Since you aren’t and all.”

Wes snorts.

“I think you’re maybe simplifying matters a little,” Luke replies.

Wedge says, “And maybe you’re complicating things. You just said it. You’re not dead like us. So why,” he asks, leaning in, elbows on the table, “are you here?”

“Because I wanted to see you all,” Luke says, the truth presenting itself to him. “Or I needed to. I let you all down,” he admits slowly.

Wedge’s dark eyes are too much to meet. Luke averts his gaze to his glass, the light swimming in the bronze shallows of the ale.

“So?” Hobbie asks, and that makes Luke look up again, lost. “You want me to count out the times this one let me down?” he asks, jerking a thumb over at Wes. “You know when we kicked it, he still owed me credits?”

Wes swats at Hobbie’s shoulder with curled, affectionate fingers. “Didn't anyone tell you not to speak ill of the dead?”

Wedge scrapes his chair along the floor and put his forearms flat on the tabletop. “You were always gonna let someone down, with all the things you were supposed to do,” he says. “And yeah, maybe you had a history of leaving us behind and maybe I’ve been angry about it, but right now? The only one holding that against you is _you._ You need forgiveness, Luke? You’ve had it.”

Luke’s eyes sting and he curls his fingers into fists on the table.

But Dak clutches Luke’s forearm and tugs at him, until Luke turns towards him, though it is hardest of all to face him, the one who never got to grow up.

“Listen, Luke,” Dak says, eyes set and serious. “I died. You can tell yourself that you got me killed, or you can say it was a walker, or you can say it was the war. But I was your gunner and I watched your back and I am telling you, you can stop carrying this, okay?”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Luke whispers into the space between them.

Dak gives the tiniest, kindest smile. “That’s okay, too,” he offers.  

Rey’s voice suddenly cuts in again loud and strange and somehow shimmering, “I’m here, okay? I’m here and I’m going to figure this out and you’re going to wake up.”

Luke swallows, lets his head drop against Dak’s shoulder. Rey is the same age Dak was.

After a long, long moment he lifts his head. “Stop being dead, huh?” he asks them all.

Wes grins. “What’s the plan?” he asks.

It’s like forming a battle plan, Wedge across the table, eyebrows pulled in with concentration, the rest of the squadron ringed around them.

“I think — I think there are still places I need to go. People I have to talk to,” Luke says, hesitant, thinking of the onward push still inside his chest. “I just don’t really know how that’s supposed to happen.”

Dak smiles suddenly. “That we can help with!” he says. “And as the resident expert,” — Dak is interrupted by various protests — “As the resident expert in the art of being dead,” he repeats, raising his voice, “let me be the one to guide you.”

Luke raises his eyebrows slightly but nods anyway.

“Close your eyes,” Dak tells him. “Put your head down. Breathe.”

Luke shuts his eyes, lays his forehead on top of his forearms on the table and breathes in, out.

“Yeah, just like that,” Dak says, soft, like lullabies. “Just like you’re falling asleep,” he murmurs.

Around Luke, his senses go pleasantly, distantly fuzzy, a slow and rolling warmth spreading. Somewhere, a voice is saying, “I think your ride’s on its way. Safe travels, boss.”


	2. Chapter 2

Shall I come wearing the visage of a lost world?

How shall I dress when descending into your clay?

\- Riyaz Latif, translated by Anand Vivek Taneja in _Jinnealogy:_ _Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi_ , 1.

* * *

Poe pulls off his headset and throws down his stylus, gritting his teeth in annoyance. “This one’s just another spice smuggler asking about a drop location!” he says, scraping back his chair, the sound gratingly loud on purpose, and standing. “We’re getting nowhere!”

Sei-Zylin slowly turns her four wide eyes to him and then past him to Connix, affixing her with a look.

“Dameron,” Connix says, looking up from her station, without even taking off her own headset, just pressing two fingers to her cheekbone, “do you have a suggestion, or are you just pitching a fit for fun?”

Poe blows air out of his nose, grips his hands into fists by his thighs, fighting for calm. “We have been searching for transmissions from everyone who split off during the evacuation since we got here. We’ve come up with exactly _nothing_ that we can deem a genuine lead,” he says. “I need a lead.”

“Do you think we want this less than you?” Sei-Zylin asks, her fangs flashing. She turns to Connix and announces, “We need to concentrate and I cannot do that if he is going to do this.”

“Poe,” Connix says, with a little nod, “take a break. You have other things to take care of, anyway.”

Poe is tired and on edge and ready to be out there, finding their people. It’s already been four days since Leia gave him his orders and he needs to see them through. So for whatever reason this, this is the thing that trips the waiting and loaded mines of his temper, the one Mamá would shake her head over and say they both inherited from her mother, a fierce woman and an angry one.

“Are you giving me an order?” Poe asks, cutting his eyes over. “I still outrank you.”

The moment that’s out of his mouth, he winces. That was the wrong move. Commander Relan-Deyi would not have approved.

Connix’s face settles into a hard mask. “I already mutinied,” she says in a flat tone. “Oddly enough, I don’t feel like I have a lot to lose in rank or reputation by asking you to leave the station _I’m_ commanding officer of.”

“Kaydel,” Poe says, holding up a conciliatory open palm, “that was — I’m sorry.” He turns to Sei-Zylin and gives a bow of his head, contrite. “You’re right, I am distracting you all. And I do have other things to work on.” He stares hard at the ground for a second, willing the words to come together the way they always seem to for Leia. Then he looks up. “I know this has been exceptionally difficult. You’ve all continued to be nothing short of exemplary,” Poe says, nodding at the command center at large.

Before the reactions can begin — it’ll be usual mixture that follows speeches like this, when they’re delivered by anyone short of Leia, people both flattered and mildly mocking — Poe turns and leaves.

He retreats to his makeshift quarters, grabbing for the ship blueprints Maz sent them.  

(“We can’t pay you,” Leia had admitted baldly, when the comm had gone through.

“Consider it a favor,” Maz had shrugged and grinned.

Leia had raised her eyebrows slightly, asked, “Am I going to regret this debt?”

Maz had simply shook her head. “No debt,” she replied. “Not this time.”)

Poe means to walk right back out, get to work, but instead he finds himself sitting down heavily onto his cot.

Something about the sound must alert Beebee Eight, who detaches from the charging point and rolls over to the cot, chirping a greeting.

“Hey, buddy,” Poe says, bending at the waist to pet Beebee’s head. It’s been a shitty couple months though, so instead he nearly pitches forward, resting his forehead against the dome of Beebee’s head. “Wanna come look at ship blueprints with me?”

Beebee beeps agreement and starts trundling out of the room and down the hall, already listing demands for the droid/ship interface.

“Wait up!” Poe calls, grabbing his datapads and hurrying behind.

Beebee, who only seems to have grown less likely to listen to him since jaunting off with Finn and Rose and apparently _stealing a ship_ , bends further down and zooms along the hallway, coming to a sudden stop in front of Luke’s room in the med bay. When Poe finally catches up, Beebee’s already in an animated conversation with Artoo about ship weapons systems.

“Man,” Poe says to Luke’s still body. “Even my droid doesn’t want hang out with me today, huh?”

Beebee rolls over and smashes into Poe’s knee affectionately and painfully.

“You know what?” Poe says, unable to keep the strain out of his voice. “You’re right, I should sit.”

He pulls out his datapad, opens the ship spec holoprojections, and settles within reaching distance of Luke’s knee. (His mind, unbidden, unhelpfully, calls up the sensation of kissing Luke’s inner thigh, just above the kneecap, feeling the twitching jump of muscles beneath his lips, hearing the sharp intake of breath.)

Poe shakes his head, scrubs at his face, and falls into work, tackling the starfighter options first.

“Are you . . . doing datawork in here?” a voice asks from the doorway, some indeterminate time later.

Poe doesn’t startle. He doesn’t. He just — jerks a bit in his chair and looks up to find Rose standing a hesitant half-step into the room, where he hadn’t spotted her before.

“Yeah,” Poe agrees. He shrugs at the not exactly impressed look she shoots him. “What? It’s quiet in here. And it’s not like I’m disturbing him.”

Rose’s mouth tightens and she crosses her arms. Rose, Poe is coming to realize, is pretty judgmental for such a sweet-faced, earnest person.

“Commander! I mean, captain?” Rose starts and then stumbles.

“Just call me Poe,” Poe says, putting on a smile. Then he thinks, _Paige always did_ , and his stomach sinks.

“Poe,” Rose barrels on, “you can’t just use Luke Skywalker’s recovery room as your workspace.”

“Leia does,” Poe points out. It’s true.

“That’s different. She’s . . . General Organa. And they’re twins,” Rose concludes.

“Maybe the company’s good for him,” Poe counters. He’s still not sure how much he actually believes that, but at least in here Poe can look up and see solid confirmation that Luke’s still breathing, still here, still somehow, impossibly alive.

Rose purses her lips, but then she gets distracted by the schematics Poe has floating in front of him.

“These are prototype ship blueprints,” she says, leaning in eagerly. “They look like they're Sullustan.”

“The real things might have been at some point,” Poe says. “They could be be ours, if Maz can work her magic.”

Rose looks up. “How exactly is she getting them?” she asks, slowly, like she knows she might be walking into murk. “The last time you talked to her, she was being shot at.”

Poe can't help but pull down the corner of his mouth sardonic. “The last time I spoke to her, _we_ were being stalked by Star Destroyers. Anyway, we don’t exactly have a lot of suppliers bidding for the honor of reviving the Resistance fleet. We’re a little low on credits. And resources. And —”

“I get it,” Rose cuts him off. Then she bites her lip and says, tumbling over herself, “I can help. I _know_ ships. Let me help?”

Poe nods. “Take a seat,” he says. “Tell me about these criatan engines.”

Rose nods and takes a seat, pulling the holographic projections closer and frowning. She hums to herself. Poe sits back, lets her at it.

“Okay, so the thing that’s gonna be newest for you is this,” Rose says, after several long, concentrated moments of study, pointing to some complicated component that Poe takes several seconds too long to register as the thruster regulation system. “This has to be a recent development. From what I can tell? Basically the difference between this and the system we were using on the old starfighters is —”

Poe pulls back out his stylus from where he’d tucked it behind his ear and starts taking notes. As they work, angle of the orange sun shifts, beginning to cast long shadows, and the list of of annotations Rose has appended to of the blueprints grows.

For one wandering moment, Poe wonders if Luke is dreaming of flying now.

Just as they’re finishing up, the options whittled down to the most practical, the most needed, Connix’s voice crackles over his comm, telling Poe, “You better get down here now!”

Poe is on his feet immediately, his blood thrumming in his ears as he hurries down the badly-lit hallway to the command. The sound of his boots hitting the floor resounds around him, echoed by Beebee Eight at his heels.

“What’s wrong?” he barks into his comm. “What’ve we got?”

“A message,” Connix replies. “Analai coded.”

Poe picks up speed. Analai isn’t one of the commonly used Resistance codes, but the Republic Fleet had taught it to everyone cycled through a BorderSec posting. Which means it could be anyone who’d flown with Poe in Rapier Squadron, back before they’d defected en masse. Poe turns sharp around a corner, bursting into the command center.

“We’re decoding now,” Connix says, looking up. “It looks like it’s written in Oiyan.”

“Sir,” Poe says to Leia, hope caught in his throat. He doesn’t know any Oiyan, but it’s Jess’s first language, the one she’s said she still sometimes dreams in.

“Let’s see,” Leia says evenly.

“Dear Honored Grandmother,” Connix begins, face set with concentration. “I know you will say it has been too long since I wrote. I didn’t intend such a delay, but it has been a strange and difficult migration season. Cousin and I have settled on a safe peak with our flock, but I regret to share that the speeder you warned us to be so careful with has broken down here.”

“Jess,” Poe breathes out.

She’d told him and Ello once, late into a night off-duty, that she’d become a pilot because it was as close as she could get to the stories her grandmother used to tell, where on some distant mountain, there were people who could grant wishes and shed their skins for plumage and flight.

“So, of course now I dearly miss Little Sister and her handiness. She would know just how to fix that speeder! If you could spare her from the harvest and allow her to visit, it would be so wonderful to see her. It does grow lonely, here on our own. And I would feel better knowing I could take the flock away should it be necessary. The villagers here say the wolves come in winter to hunt in the next range,” Connix continues, cheeks beginning to grow pale. Poe can feel his own breath, shallow in his throat. “Don’t worry too much about us, though. The flock and I are safe now. I only wish for a quiet way home. Please respond and let me know if you are well. It’s so hard to know, these days.”

Connix looks at them then, biting her lower lip.

Leia turns to Poe and asks, “How sure are you that it’s Pava?”

“It’s her,” Poe says, certain in his very blood.

Connix swallows and adds, “Little sister, in Oiyan? That’s what Pava always called Rose. She must be looking for an engineer, for the personnel ship. Something must have happened to them.”

“Where did it come from?” Leia asks Connix.

“She’s clever,” Connix says, shaking her head and managing a wan smile. “The signal’s been pinged off any number of way stations. I’m going to need a little time. But we’re looking at the Hasandai region,” she says, calling up a space chart and enlarging.

“It fits with what she’s saying,” Sei-Zylin agrees. “See, there’s a First Order mining colony right at the edge of Hasandai space, so it would make sense if there are periodic patrols going through,” she says, pointing it out, “but technically the rest of the region’s non-aligned. There’s not much in the way of useful resources, so it gets left alone.”

Leia nods, thoughtful and solemn. Then she turns to Poe and asks, “When will you be ready to leave?”

“The moment I have a ship,” Poe swears.

Leia nods and leans over to a comm console, punching in her codes. The holo connection blooms to life.

“Maz,” Leia announces, “our timeline’s changed. We’re going to need those ships immediately.”

Maz grins. “I thought you’d never ask,” she says.

Poe is hyperaware of the thrum of his heart in his chest.

“Thank you,” he says, to Maz and Leia, and to Connix and Sei-Zylin, already triangulating the message’s origin point. He says it to the pantheon his Abuelo prayed to for his parents’ safe return, all the goddesses who were rivers and gods who were trees. To any benevolent thing that might be listening.

Finally, a mission. Finally, movement.

* * *

Luke jerks into awareness when he almost falls to the floor, the scene around him careening.

“Okay back there, kid?” a very familiar voice calls.

Luke scrambles to his feet and is immediately knocked back into a wall. Bracing himself, Luke gets himself in halting steps to the cockpit that holds so many of Luke’s memories.

“Han?” he asks, gasping.

“Yeah!” Han says, swiveling around for a moment, as young and brown-haired as the day Luke first met him. “Now, get in the co-pilot’s seat and help!”

“Are we crashing?” Luke asks, mostly falling into the seat by Han and gripping at the seat with with his now-boyish hands. Hands from the days when he was still more used to vaporators than freighters. “How is that even possible?”

“I guess death has a sense of humor,” Han offers, throwing back switches wildly. “Now hold onto something!”

The ship judders wildly, then suddenly stabilizes, and jumps into hyperspace.

“Hyperspace exists in the afterlife?” Luke asks, because his brain feels overloaded and he has too many questions.

Han sits back, lacing his hands together to crack them. “It does for me.”

“I don’t . . . know what that means,” Luke offers, staring out the viewport, blinking.

Han grins. “Works better when you don’t think too hard about it, kid,” he says. “So. Where are we headed?”

Luke turns to stare at him. “It’s your fake dead ship,” he says, gesturing wildly, trying to encompass the Falcon’s cockpit. “Don’t you know where you’re going?”

Han looks at him sideways. “It seemed like you needed a ride,” he responds.

Luke slumps back into the co-pilot’s chair. “Yeah,” he agrees, scrubbing at his hair. “I guess I did.”

“How’s that girl from Jakku taking care of my ship?” Han asks.

A smile, unbidden, twitches at Luke’s lips. “She loves that hunk of junk,” he says. “Personally, I’m amazed it’s still flying.”

“I may have misplaced her for a while,” Han admits, scratching at his shoulder, like he’s admitting to Leia he’d let a four-year-old Ben eat too many sweets.

“How’d you do that?” Luke asks. He knows there was a time before the Falcon for Han, but it’s hard to imagine, even with the stories Lando would lean in to tell, already laughing before he even began.

“I don’t” — Han shakes his head quickly — “wanna talk to about it.”

Luke takes a deep breath in, steels himself, and asks, “Do you want to talk about Ben?”

Han’s eyes fall closed, the space between his eyebrows pinched.

“He _killed_ you,” Luke says, and it is the first time he has said that aloud. The weight of it is crushing, enough to make his sternum feel caved in.

Han swallows. “I had to go. I had to try,” he says, fingers reaching out to touch the control panel, darting and not settling on any adjustments. “That was my kid.”

Luke’s throat aches. “I don’t know how I went so wrong with him, that he could kill people who love him.”

Han shakes his head. “We all did it wrong, I guess. Maybe we should have —” he sighs and swipes a hand out across his mouth. “Guess hypotheticals can’t change things now.”

“No,” Luke agrees. It’s far too late, now. He only has to look around for that to be clear.

“Look,” Han says, “I don’t think it was something you did, or something Leia did, or hell, I don’t even think it was something I did, in the end. Maybe it was a little bit the things we all did. Or that we didn’t do. But Snoke was the one in his head.”

And Ben was the one who listened, Luke thinks. He doesn’t say that, though. Instead, he attempts, “Rey tried to talk to him, I think.”

Han glances over at Luke, a weak reflection of a lopsided smile just barely there. “She’s a good kid,” he says.

Luke breaks his gaze. “Yeah,” he agrees, looking down at his hands.

“Doesn’t know a lot about blasters,” Han shrugs, “but she’s got, uh, I guess Lando’d call it spunk.”

Luke wrinkles his nose. “Oh, she can definitely shoot things,” he says. “She took out a whole chunk of a wall. And half a stone formation, with the lightsaber.”

Han grins now, the real thing. “Guess property damage is a Jedi thing, huh? I seem to remember you leaving a few establishments worse for the wear over the years.”

“Not on purpose! Most of the time,” Luke protests.

Han snorts. How he ever managed to convince so many people he was suave remains something of a mystery to Luke.

Abruptly, the ship shudders and sputters, an alarm starting to go off.

“Han,” Luke says, sitting up.

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Han says getting up. “The wiring’s been acting up, just give me a second to fix it. I’ll be back. You keep an eye on the controls.”

Luke’s watching him exit the cockpit when the back of his neck prickles and a strange, reverberating shiver courses down his spine, rattling his nerves.

Suddenly, beside him is Rey, her body oddly unsubstantial, glowing faintly, a warm aura around her.

“Was that —” Rey gasps, eyes tracking out the cockpit, then turning wildly to Luke.

Luke frowns, getting up, almost reaching out, afraid that if he tries his hand will pass through her as if through mist. “How are you here? Where’s Leia?” he asks, pressing his question out quickly, because he doesn’t know how this works. His ghosts always came to him, but they were the ones who were dead. “Where are you?”

“I’m okay, and so is she!” Rey says, holding up her hands, open palms towards Luke. “We’re hiding, with the Resistance.”

“How are you here?” Luke asks again, wonderingly.

“I’m trying,” she says, her voice fading somewhat, like she’s grown further away, “. . . link. But you can hear me this time?” she presses, clearer again.

“I’ve been hearing you,” Luke says. “You and Leia. You couldn’t hear me.”

Rey frowns and leans in, arms crossed. “ . . . really hard,” she says. “Where are you?”

Luke’s eyes flicker around the cockpit, searching for a way to answer. “There are — I think there are people I need to see here.”

“You need to come back,” Rey says. “We need —” she flickers, like a holorecording on a bad connection.

“Rey? I can’t — I can’t _hear_ you, Rey,” Luke cuts in. “You keep —” he doesn’t know how to fill that in. It’s as if when she fades she stops existing, but that’s a terrible thought.

“This is too hard to — how do you concentrate? I can’t keep myself here!” Rey says, stamping her foot, suddenly solid and evidently irritated. Then she’s gone.

“Not sure I’d be much help anyway. Telepathy was never one of my particular strengths,” Luke informs the spot where she once was.

“Alright, kid,” Han says, coming back in. “We should be fine now.” He sprawls down in the pilot’s chair, swiveling it, and then raises his eyebrows. “What happened to you?” he asks.

When he was alive, or more alive anyway, Luke generally handled the ‘and by the way, sometimes I talk to ghosts’ conversation by not having it. He decides he might as well fall back on that now, although this time he’s the ghost in the situation, more or less.

“The Force was doing something strange,” Luke says, which is somewhat accurate, at least.

Han rolls his eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he says. “So,” he adds, lacing his hands behind his head and looking at Luke, “do you know where I’m supposed to be taking you yet?”

Luke shakes his head. “Do you think we could just — fly for a while?”

“Sure thing,” Han says. “See, I knew you missed the Falcon, too.”

Luke trails a hand along the co-pilot’s console. “Turns out I did,” he agrees.

They drift for a while, Luke making adjustments or Han tweaking things as Luke’s instincts whisper to him, sharing their past years, in stops and starts.

Han thinks the Caretakers sound hilarious. Luke’s pretty sure they would’ve hated Han, but then again they seemed to disapprove of most things and people, Luke included at least half the time.

Luke, of course, asks the important questions. “Rathars! Did you lose your _mind_?” Chewbacca definitely hadn’t mentioned that when he was yelling at Luke, or when he was hugging Luke so tightly he could hardly breathe.

“It was good money!” Han protests. “And usually that kind of thing went fine.”

Luke wants to say something about how Leia wouldn’t have approved, but it hurts to think of Leia on her own for so long. So instead Luke just shakes his head.

Some time later, Han breaks off a story about Chewie and Maz Kanata, frowning down at the nav equipment and announcing, “Hey, so I think we’re here.”

“Where’s here?” Luke asks.

“Take a look,” Han says, waving a hand.

Luke takes in the planet coming up ahead, glittering with lights even from this distance. “Hosnian Prime,” he murmurs, under his breath. He should have expected it.

“I sure hope you’re not here to make a report to some afterlife Senate,” Han says.

Luke grimaces. “Why would you even say that?”

Han shrugs. “For some of those political types Leia knew, being in some everlasting Senate would probably be their idea of paradise,” he says.

Luke and Han both shudder in unison. Then Luke rolls his shoulders back.

“No,” he says, “I think it’s something else.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Han says, starting to pull them down into atmo, the soaring buildings of Republic City starting to rise up to meet them. He brings them down on a landing pad near the center of it all.

Luke stares out the viewport for a long moment. “Okay,” he says, preparing himself.

“So?” Han asks.

“I’m ready,” Luke says, setting his shoulders and standing.

Luke makes his way out of the cockpit with Han. But when he starts down the boarding ramp, there are no accompanying footsteps behind him.

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Luke asks, already knowing the answer, stomach swooping with incipient loss.

“I think this one’s for you,” Han says, hooking a thumb into his belt. “But you’ll be seeing me.”

Luke swallows and nods, not trusting his voice.

“Alright,” Han says, gesturing to him, “come here.”

Luke walks halfway back up the ramp, to walk into a long, fierce hug. When he steps back, Luke has to set his jaw against the ache.

“Thanks for the ride,” Luke says.

Han sticks his hands in pockets. “You got it,” he says.

When he’s on the landing pad, the chaotic smells of Republic City starting to envelope him, Luke turns around to throw Han a two-fingered salute. Han gives one back, laconic and wearing a hint of a smirk.

“Hey, Luke?” Han offers into the air, buzzing with flight traffic.

“Yeah?”

Han says, “If you see her highness before I do, tell her — ” he pauses.

“Yeah,” Luke fills in, the wind beginning to weave around him. “I will. But she knows.”

“Well, yeah. Of course she does,” Han agrees. Then he gives that half-nod upward, so familiar, and says, “Good luck finding whatever it is you’re looking for.”

“May the Force be with you,” Luke responds, a smile breaking out despite everything.

“ _With_ me?” Han scoffs. “Listen, I can’t get away from it now. And I gotta say, it’s no wonder you and her highness both turned out a little weird.”

“Yeah? What was your excuse then?” Luke grins.

“Okay,” Han says. “You just get going, kid.”

* * *

The next two days are a whirlwind of preparation.

“The team on this will need to be small,” Leia says at their briefing, a map of the Hasandai region projected behind her. “We can’t afford to be noticed and we don’t have many people to spare right now. We go in under the radar and stay that way. That’s the priority. Dameron?”

Poe nods and takes over the podium. “I’ll be lead on this, C’ai will be co-pilot and second in command, and since Pava specifically asked for her and we’ve decided to be indulgent, Rose will be coming along as flight engineer,” he says, nodding over at Rose, who nods back fiercely.

Finn shifts in his seat, his mouth set in a firm, unhappy line, sneaking a look sideways at the back of Rose’s head.

Beside him, Rey leans forward, resting her chin on her hands, elbows digging into her thighs as she studies the map projections.

Poe zooms in the map. “Once we’ve located and recovered Pava’s personnel group, projected to be somewhere in the southern hemisphere of Olia-é-Yarun,” he explains, “we’ll repair and rearm the personnel cruiser. At that point, we’ll escort them back here. Since we’re not going in with a full squadron, we’ll need to be a little circuitous, to keep from attracting any attention.”

Leia nods, takes the podium again, and announces, “Let’s make it happen.”

And then only hours later, Poe and C’ai and Rose are in the landing bay, loading the sleek new Sullustan light freighter sent to them by Maz.

C’ai and Beebee are organizing the weapons inventory and C’ai, good-natured to a fault, seems be trying to gently dissuade Beebee from the sheer number of projectiles she would like to take.

“Beebee, we’re trying to be subtle,” Poe says. “Grenades usually aren’t subtle.”

Beebee chirps in vocal protest.

“Yeah, I like them, too,” Poe says. “I just don’t think we’re gonna need three crates, you know?”

A few feet away, Rose is finalizing her own inventory with Finn and Rey acting as her assistants. “Repressor coils?” Rose asks, reaching her hand out as she keeps studying her datapad.

“Uh,” Finn says, frowning down at the pile before hesitantly hovering his hand over some piping.

“No, no, she’s looking for the other one, the one by your elbow,” Rey says, craning to look over, as she hefts another crate onto the loading barge.

“Right, yeah,” Finn says. “Those are the repressor coils. Of course they are.”

Rose, oblivious, takes the coils and places them in the bin. “Great. This one’s done!” she says, sealing the top.

Finn practically sighs as she walks off, directing the loading barge up into the ship. Poe shares an amused glance with C’ai, who only shrugs.

“Buddy,” Poe says, clapping a hand on Finn’s shoulder, “if you’ve got something to say, you better do it quickly. We are scheduled to leave soon. Imminently, if you will.”

Instead of taking Poe’s very solid advice on interpersonal relations, Finn turns to face Poe and asks, “Don’t you think you’ll need another person? Three people to find all those missing pilots and personnel, that close to First Order territory? Maybe I should come.”

Poe grins. “I’d be flattered you care so much about my safety,” he leans in slightly to say the rest close to Finn’s ear, “but I get this feeling I’m not really the one you’re thinking about right now.” Poe nods slightly towards Rose, who’s looking at a data pad Connix is holding out and gesturing emphatically.

Finn takes a half step back, shaking his head extravagantly. “What? No! I’m just — you know. All of you. I’m worried about all of you. You might need someone who knows the First Order.”

“You knowing the First Order is exactly why the General needs you here,” Poe says, re-shouldering his pack. He claps a hand on Finn's upper arm and squeezes briefly. “That brain of yours is going to keep all of them safe,” Poe nods out towards the landing bay at large, “until we can regroup.”

Finn shrugs. “I’d just feel better . . .” he trails off, his eyes darting around.

“I get it,” Poe says. “Believe me, I do.”

Finn narrows his eyes at him for a second, but then Rey breaks into the moment, saying, “Finn, can you get the other side of this one?” nodding at a large crate. “I’d try lifting it with the Force but it’s filled with blasters and I’m not sure —”

“I’ll get it,” Finn says rapidly.

The back of Poe’s neck prickles a bit, an after effect of Finn’s unspoken question.

When Poe’s stowed his personal equipment, he turns to Beebee and asks in a sudden hurry, because he knows she won’t mind, “Cover for me for a couple minutes? There’s just something I have to do.”

Beebee whistles a warning to return promptly or she’ll finish the weapons storage by herself.

“Noted,” Poe says, grimacing. The last thing he needs is his droid getting trigger happy at the wrong moment.

Still, that thought isn’t enough to distract him. Poe’s chest feels tight when he arrives in front of Luke’s door. His grasping fingers and greedy heart aren’t nearly as amenable to this part of the mission as they are to the rest of it. But regardless, it has to be done.

“I’m headed out,” Poe says, settling on the bed next to Luke and taking his hand. “I might be gone for a while. So, uh.”

Poe bites his lip. He’d never really had trouble talking to Luke before — before everything — but back then he’d been younger, unthinkingly hopeful in love, and thoroughly incapable of imagining of how much darker the future would grow. It’s different now, knowing the things his hands have done, knowing the way Luke walked into what he must have known could be his death without a backward glance.

“Just concentrate on getting better, while I’m gone, huh?” Poe finishes, lamely. “Jess’ll want to see you. You’d hate to let her down.”

Jess was the reason Poe, any of them, first had the chance to fly with Luke. It had taken months for her to work up the nerve to ask Luke to teach her the death-defying swoop that kept Luke’s name in the Academy textbooks even decades after he’d mustered out of the Fleet. Luke had laughed, eyes alight with sudden amusement, and immediately admitted that he needed the Force to pull it off but that he’d stolen it, kind of, from something he’d grown up seeing smuggling freighters do, to pull people off their tails.

“She still does that move you to showed her,” Poe tells Luke now. “Or, well, she adapted it for our X-Wings. Snap always says it gives him heart palpitations when she does it.” Poe strokes his thumb over Luke’s knuckles, smiling slightly. “And he’s the one who used to be in those air shows, back in the day.”

“It’ll be good to have her back,” he says. Then he swallows and adds, “And it’ll be good to have you up and about. So it’d be nice if you could manage that by the time we come back.”

Poe bites his lip and nods and gets up off the bed, sliding Luke’s hand back down by his side. Poe needs to go, but he had always preferred to leave Luke smiling, if he could.  

“Kiss for luck, sweetheart?” Poe asks, the words surfacing, rusty habit making itself known again. He’d always ask, right before he headed back from leave, just to make Luke wrinkle his nose at the cliche, or roll his eyes lightly, or ask Poe if he planned on needing luck. (But for all that, once they’d acknowledged what was between them, Poe had never left Thaela without Luke pressing a soft kiss and murmured wishes against his skin, like a would-be blessing.)

Luke stays unnaturally still on the bed, but Poe lets his eyes fall shut as he bends down to press a soft, lingering kiss to Luke’s cheek. Like this, Luke could almost be asleep and it could almost be some other time, some other reality. The moment can’t last of course.  

“I’ll see you soon,” Poe says as he straightens up, something just short of a promise.  

* * *

Luke wanders off the municipal landing bay, into the transit hub. It’s teeming with people, which is unexpected, or possibly just fitting. Republic City, even before it was called that, was always crowded, filled with rapid people leading rapid lives.  

Luke pushes his way out through one of the transit hub’s doors and emerges out into the sunlight. The brightness is doubled against the obsidian and textured chrome of the city blocks. It’s a shock after the punctuated darkness of space. Luke has to fight the urge to gape, feeling dislocated and young again.

Luke had blown through Hosnian Prime dozens of times in his thirties and somehow the planet had never stopped being a surprise. The Hosnian system had been one of the lucky ones, with little Imperial presence to rout and more preserved history than most places could boast. That was why Luke had first come, to try to unearth the Jedi. To make them something more solid than ghosts and his own unsteady intuition.

Luke wanders the boulevards, lost in thought. ( _How can it be, that a place so alive can be so entirely gone? How does the universe continue? How has his sister?_ ) He turns the corner to find himself at street transit stop, a trolley speeder sliding to a stop in front of him.

“This is a Lalit Heights-bound Echo line trolley,” the smooth voice of driver droid informs him, as a few passengers disembark. “Next stop, Asthene Plaza, University of Hosnia.”

Luke feels a shiver down his spine, despite the easy sunlight around him. He steps onto the trolley. Eerily, he’s the only the passenger. But Luke sits anyway, because he knows who he’s here to see now. He’s known, really, since they landed. Aditi and Hosnia are inextricable in Luke’s memory. They were lost (to everyone, to him) a decade apart, but they ache in unison.

Aditi had been the one who truly believed in the existence of the First Temple. And Luke had loved her (still loves her) for that. Luke himself had harbored doubts about the First Temple after years of false starts, and Lor San had wondered if the First Temple was a metaphor, and Rona hadn’t really cared, too focused on the questions of the next week, the next year, to look back.

But Aditi had been determined, saying, “Maybe we won’t find it ourselves, but these references are to somewhere that really existed. There are too many of them and they’re too specific to be a story. It’s out there.” She had been the one with the least reason to care, arguably the one with the least time to spare on some romantic quest for lost Jedi history, but she had maintained a surety that Luke had needed, then.

So when Luke had nothing left but his body and a ship, he’d clawed his way out by clinging to the promise Aditi and he had made to each other, when they should have already have too old for those kinds of dreams. They’d sworn to find the First Temple and yet Luke had never done it, never really committed, and then Aditi had been gone. One more promise Luke had failed to keep in time.

When the temple burned, the promise unburied itself, something to anchor himself to.

The island had been so desolate, the one piece of habitable land to be found on the whole hemisphere, but it had been _real_. Just like Aditi’d believed. Getting out of his X-Wing, Luke’s knees had gone out from under him and he’d cried. For the generations of loss, for the remnants that echoed in the wind, with the stench of fire still in his brain.  

Out the windows the trolley, Luke half-sees the boulevard melt away, opening up to wild, tree-lined park.

“Arriving Asthene Plaza, University of Hosnia,” the droid driver informs him as the trolley eases to a stop and the doors slide open. Luke disembarks, walking with careful, deliberate footsteps past the heart of Asthene Plaza, past the main university buildings, to where the stately, massive Republic Archives reign. All the knowledge found in each of the Republic’s multitude of Memory Vaults is gathered here together, crowned in beauty.

Sitting near the top of the wide sloping steps, framed between two columns, is Aditi.

Luke takes the steps two at a time until he’s within speaking distance.

“Master Archivist,” Luke says, finding himself grinning, sweeping down into the half-bow native Hosnians always greeted each other with.

“Master Jedi,” Aditi returns, standing and doing the same, her eyes sparkling. She beckons him up, the bangles on her wrists singing.

She looks healthy, vital. The last time Luke had seen her, disease had worn her down, sloughed the weight off her bones and the luster out of her hair. There is no sign of that now and Luke is fiercely glad for that.

When they hug, her perfume smells exactly like it did years ago. She was first person Luke knew who wore perfume with any regularity.

Aditi steps back then and looks at him, the wrinkle between her eyebrows emerging. “How did you get here?” she asks.

“A ship,” Luke answers, although that’s almost certainly not the question Aditi is asking.

Aditi shakes her head and the black waterfall of her hair trembles as she laughs. “You can be so extraordinarily literal, _yaar_ ,” Aditi says.

“I like flying,” Luke shrugs.

“There's no time, there's no distance either,” Aditi says, says throwing out her arms to gesture around them. “And still you came in a ship. Fine, fine. Perhaps it is a metaphor?”

Luke huffs and sits down on the stone steps. “What's all this a metaphor for then?” he asks, gesturing at all the solid, shining edifices, the city beyond them.

“Not all things need to be metaphors,” Aditi says archly, as she sits beside him, demurely smoothing down her long skirt. “Some things are already beautiful.”

Luke lets his eyebrows drift up, but he rests his arms on his knees, feels the banked warmth in the marble beneath him.

(He had been shocked, the first time he’d seen the Asthene Plaza and the University, back when the Archives were still only a vision coursing in Aditi’s veins. Even five years distant from the boy who’d left Tatooine, he’d found himself dumbstruck that a place so ludicrously elegant was a school. There was no reason for the way things looked, except that Hosnians believed learning was beautiful and beautiful things helped people learn.)

“I thought you believed in reincarnation,” Luke says, still looking forward, across the lawns and the fountains, the wandering scholars in their robes, the call of birds in the trees and the sleek purr of speeders on the streets beyond. “I guess I didn’t expect to see you.”

“I certainly didn’t expect to see you!” Aditi replies. “Are you dead? Are you alive? Is there something between that?”

“Me, apparently,” Luke says.

Aditi clicks her tongue.

“I’ll try to explain if you try to explain,” Luke offers.

“Where to start?” Aditi asks herself, breathing out the question. She’s quiet for a while, letting the sounds of the university settle around them.

Waiting, sometimes, is like meditation, Luke thinks. It took him time and practice to learn the skill needed for them both.

“Like I said, there is no time, there is no distance,” Aditi says, shrugging easily and leaning in, a sure sign of a speech to come. “Who is to say I haven’t reincarnated? That I won’t? Perhaps the time that has passed for you has no claims on me. How can we know ‘when’ it is for me?”

Luke frowns and rubs at his temple. “I thought maybe you’d help me figure out what’s happening here but I have no idea what you just said,” Luke tells her. 

Talking to Aditi was like that, a lot, but in a way Luke could never resent. It was like watching Leia discuss political philosophy or Lando talk about union negotiations. Luke had no basis and no context for any of it but it was undeniably impressive.

Aditi laughs. “Just because this is where you see me and how doesn’t mean it’s all the same,” she says. “The Force holds all things, correct? That’s what you used to say. Very much an evasion, by the way,” Aditi holds up a finger against the protest Luke was about to make. “But if the Force holds all things, why could it not allow for rebirth?”

“You’ve told me that before,” Luke says.

“Perhaps you were in need of a reminder,” Aditi offers, slow and thoughtful. “We could all do with a reminder of things we’ve been told, don’t you think?”

Luke studies her profile.

“I found the First Temple,” Luke tells her, because she of all people deserves to know.

Aditi straightens up and leans in again immediately. “What was it like?”

Luke stares down at the beautiful trees scattered throughout Asthene Plaza. “Disappointing, honestly,” he admits.

Aditi breathes out through her nose, noisy. “Disappointing?” she asks. “Disappointing in what way?”

“It wasn’t —” Luke scratches at his wrist. “It didn’t happen like we thought, Adi. We wanted to find it . . . to recover something,” he says. “I found it when it felt like I had nowhere left to go. And it couldn’t help me. Not the way I was looking for.”

“Well,” Aditi says, resting her chin on her hands, eyes downcast. “Maybe we built it up too much?”   

Luke hums, traces a finger along the edge of the step he’s seated on. “They were ruins,” he shrugs. “Not an answer. I guess . . . I guess didn’t really think there’d be one. Not for the questions I had. But I still _wanted_ them.”

Aditi reaches out, squeezes his hand. “Of course,” she says.

Luke squeezes back. “I’m sorry this is gone,” he says, nodding out at the plaza.

Aditi rests her head against his shoulder. “So am I,” she whispers. “You know, I spent so many years preparing all those archives against the possibility of planetary destruction. And I never really thought it would happen. Not here at least. Isn’t strange, to lose one’s naivety after death?”

“Losing a planet, it’s not . . . imaginable,” Luke says, struggling for the words and the comfort. “But because of you, some of all this will survive. People will at least have something to remember with.”

“I truly believed the Republic Archives would be ultimate failsafe against another Death Star. We would hold all the history, all the art, all the medical wisdom that every Republic planet gathered in their Memory Vaults. And none of that data would ever been lost again. There would never be another Alderaan,” Aditi whispers. “I really thought Hosnia would be protected, so we could protect the rest, hold their stories.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Luke says, chest aching. “How were we meant to know there could be worse than a whole planet being destroyed?”

She sighs and turns to Luke. “I suppose I’m saying I know something about building something with hope and,” she twines the hem of skirt in her fingers, “and flaws.”

“How much do you know?” Luke asks, curling his shoulders into himself. “About what happened at the training temple?”

Aditi reaches for his hand. “I know,” is all she says.

“There were definitely flaws,” Luke laughs, bitter.

“As in all things,” Aditi agrees. Then she falls quiet. She was always good at that, building silences that were their own kind of welcoming.

“Will the First Order look for them?” Aditi asks, finally, voice wavering slightly. “The Memory Vault sites?”

“I don’t know,” Luke admits. He never understood Snoke and for as hard as he had tried, Luke didn’t understand Ben either.

Aditi says nothing, but threads her arm through Luke’s and keeps looking down at the Plaza, the while the sounds of birdsong and air traffic provide a background hum.

“I suppose — I suppose I’ll have to believe that we did enough, that the things we preserved will be enough, to remind people they should mourn this place,” she finally says.

“They will,” Luke promises, though he hardly assure that.  

“What about the Jedi? Will they survive?” Aditi lifts her head, to look at Luke straight on.

Suddenly the air around them folds strangely and there Rey is, shimmering strangely, arms pushed out like she’s trying to steady herself.

“It would seem so,” Luke says lightly.

“Where is this?” Rey asks, looking around wildly. “What is this?”

“Luke?” Aditi asks slowly. “Is something happening?”

“I’m being haunted by an alive person,” Luke informs Aditi, who frowns.

“Excuse me?” Rey demands. “Do you know how difficult this is?”

Luke smiles wryly. “I never found death to be all that ambiguous when I was young. So I can’t say this was a problem I ever dealt with. But I don’t imagine whatever you’re doing is easy, no.”

Rey tips her chin up rapidly, almost a twitch. She’s more present this time, impressively so. However she’s doing this, she’s getting better.

“Well, you can hear me, right?” Rey asks. “Leia’s asking for you,” she says, extending her hand.

“How does one get haunted by the living?” Aditi ponders. “Besides the usual ways. Because this sounds like you being literal again. Explain.”

“It’s like ghosts, but in reverse,” Luke says, opting for simplicity. He’s never had Leia’s talent for rhetoric.

“What?” Rey asks. “Is there someone with you? I see . . . steps?” She shakes her head. “Are there birds?”

“It’s Republic City, on Hosnian Prime,” Luke tells her. “I’m saying good-bye.”

Rey’s face transforms, her eyes going wide and dark with horror. It is a wonderful and terrible thing, that a girl who has seen so little of the galaxy can mourn what was gone before she ever knew it. Rey flickers, fading out into translucence and then fiercely reasserting her own solidity. She looks around, gaze shifting across Asthene Plaza, drinking it in rapidly.

As she does that, Aditi’s eyes widen and she clutches at Luke’s arm.

“Can you see her?” Luke asks, startled.

“There’s — there’s something,” Aditi says. “Is there a girl?”

“Your planet is beautiful,” Rey says, looking at Aditi, whose nails dig into Luke’s skin, surprisingly little pricks of pain.

Then, like the effort of her stubborn eked out existence here has exhausted her reserves, Rey disappears.

“She said,” Luke begins.

“I — I heard,” Aditi says, a thread of wonder in her voice. “Who is she?” she asks.

“A Jedi,” Luke answers.

“That I guessed,” Aditi laughs. “She is your living ghost, then?”

“That’s her,” Luke agrees.

“And why is she haunting you?” Aditi asks.

“She wants me to come back,” Luke says. “To the living.”

“And are you going to?” Aditi asks, her voice even.

“I’m not — I’m not done here, yet,” Luke says. “I know there are things I haven’t faced yet.”

“Can I help?” Aditi asks.

Luke looks at her, to solidify her in his memory like this, and nods. “Can you help me get to where I’m supposed to be next?” he asks.

Aditi nods. “Of course,” she says.

“Aditi?” Luke says, quickly, because suddenly he knows from the way the wind is blowing, that his time here is up. “I won’t forget here. With or without the Memory Vault files.”

Aditi smiles, and it is a crooked, mournful thing. “I know. And maybe in my next life, I’ll meet your living ghost for real,” she offers.

“That would be nice,” Luke says. “I think she would like that.”

“Are you ready?” Aditi asks.

Luke nods.

“Close your eyes,” Aditi instructs, reaching up to rest her palm over Luke’s eyes. The darkness below Luke’s eyelids grows deeper. “Relax.”

“Like I’m sleeping,” Luke whispers, echoing Dak’s words.

“Just like that,” Aditi agrees, soft. “Breathe.”

Luke does, warmth blooming throughout his limbs, the sensations around him gently fading, fading.

* * *

When they land, Olia-é-Yarun is alive with mist. All around them are craggy, rising mountains and dramatic cliff faces, overhung with strange and verdant vegetation. It’s beautiful and dense and a very good place to hide people in. In his head, Poe simultaneously congratulates and curses Jess on her pick.

“Alright,” Poe says. “Vee Seven-Oh’s intel indicated that the signal had to originate within thirty klicks of this landing site.”

“Thirty klicks around, but how many up?” C’ai asks, craning his neck up to look at the horizon, dominated by mountains.

“Well, Jess said they were on a mountain and I think it’s safe to say she wasn’t be metaphorical there,” Poe says. “So within our range, we’ve got two viable options,” he points right, “this one, and,” he points left, “that one.”

A brightly colored bird flaps by and Rose tracks its path, eyes wide. C’ai looks from one mountain to the other and crosses his arms.

“Feel like a hike?” Poe asks brightly.

C’ai’s expression doesn’t change at all.

“Which one first?” Rose asks.

Poe takes a deep breath in, blows it out through his nose and points, “Let’s go with that one. There’s not a lot topographical information on Olia-é-Yarun available, but it doesn’t look like this one’s got any sheer faces to worry about.”

C’ai’s set face is eloquent.

“At least our boots are all broken in,” Poe says with faux cheer.

As the bleeding orange sunlight starts to seep warm through the leaves, they gather their packs.

“Okay, Beebee,” Poe says, kneeling to talk to his droid. “Promise you’ll stay here and keep out of sight, okay?”

Beebee protests extravagantly, even though Poe has been over this before.

“I’m not leaving you behind! I’m giving you a mission. To guard the ship. It's essential,” Poe cajols.

Beebee, despite not having lungs, manages to sound huffy, turning back to the ship.

“Stay safe!” Poe calls. “Keep me updated!”

C’ai snorts but says nothing else. Poe admires his capacity for reticence, but in a distant sort of way.

“Okay, so we’re going?” Rose asks.

“We’re going,” Poe confirms. “Stay in the middle, Rose,” he adds snapping the comm onto his wrist.

“You don’t need to baby-sit me. I know how to use this thing!” Rose protests, waving her electro-shock prod.

C’ai winces and takes a subtle step away. “We have indeed heard that you are very capable,” he promises.

“Yes. We are well aware,” Poe promises. “But if something happens to you, this whole mission fails, okay? You’re the asset here.”

Rose sets her jaw and says, “After you, I guess,” with a barbed, shallow bow.

Poe seems to have developed a real talent for pissing off small, frightening people, he thinks to himself.

But still, there’s no more grumbling, just going. Trudging might be a more accurate word. After spending most of the last couple months cooped up in the Falcon, system jumping, none of them are as prepared for an uphill trek through dense vegetation as they perhaps should be.

By hour three or four, under the clinging humidity, Rose and Poe are grimy with sweat, shedding layers, and C’ai has poured half his canteen over his head.

Poe loses his footing at a slimy, damp rock and his gut flips, brain already tumbling him down the sheer drop to left that he’s been ignoring. But almost simultaneously, C’ai’s hand darts out, gripping his bicep and pulling him bodily up. Poe sits down heavily on the next boulder, feeling his rapid, thudding heartbeat, a hand pressed to his chest. They are now above the forest mist, the valley obscured.

“Are you okay?” Rose asks, dropping down to her knees beside him and leaning in.

Poe blinks, his chest still heaving. “Yeah,” he manages. (He has gleefully scraped past death how many times and yet right now, the adrenaline racing through his blood is almost bitter.)

“Drink,” C’ai says, thrusting his canteen at Poe. “We will break and rest.”

Poe grimaces — they should be making better progress — but doesn’t argue or override the decision. He’s starting to think this mountain is a dead end anyway. There are no signs of any landing sites, no signs of material harvesting, and the hints of hacked away paths are overgrown and abandoned. If there were people living here, they’re long gone.

“Two more hours and then we make camp,” Poe decides.

C’ai nods and something loosens in Poe’s chest.

Rose slumps down and takes off her pack, trying to pull her sweat-damp shirt away from her stomach. “After weeks on a freighter, I didn’t think I’d miss deep space,” she huffs.

“The luxuries of planetary life,” Poe laughs. He’s got dirt stains all over and things stuck in his hair.

“Still smells better than that ship,” C’ai offers.

Poe snorts. (He never knew Han Solo all that well, mostly just as Leia’s husband, as someone he harbored a kind of roiling resentment against, if only because he couldn’t imagine loving the General and still leaving her. But he can vividly picture the offended face C’ai’s comment would pull up.)

They make it to the summit about an hour later, standing high enough that Rose swallows and shuffles backward from the edge of a jutting face. The vegetation here is less choking and the air clearer but again, no people at all. Poe peers across to the neighboring peak speculatively. In the dying light, he can’t guess if he sees smoke or not.

“Alright, might as well stay here for the night,” Poe declares. “We’ll eat, we’ll sleep and we’ll head back down in the morning.”

“Will,” Rose hesitates. “We’ll find them, right? I mean — it was like a hundred something people, with Jess.”

“We will,” C’ai says, with a strong, simple conviction that Poe can lean on. “Pava is good. And she is expecting us.”

“We’ll find them,” Poe echoes.

“Okay,” Rose agrees, playing with the strap of her pack and then nodding. “Okay.”

C’ai wakes Poe at the agreed upon time and Poe crawls out of their tent to stand guard. The night, at least, is cooler than the day but not quieter. The mountain resounds with animal calls. It’s different than the jungle of Poe’s childhood, but close enough to make Poe think of his mother. He’s been thinking of her often, lately. He’s older by years than she was when he was born. Very soon, he’ll be older than she was when she and Papa mustered out and came home.  

Poe is staring off into the dark, caught in a memory of his mother walking through their fields, her hair wild, when a sound snags in his mind. It’s coming from inside the tent. Poe scrambles over on his knees, pulling open the flaps.

In the front corner, Rose is — crying.

“What's wrong?” Poe asks, his chest tight with fear. “It's just animals moving around, the sounds. I promise.”

Rose swipes at her faces and shakes her head violently. “It's not — it's not _that_ ,” she chokes out.

“Rose?” Poe asks. He wants to reach out, offer comfort, but he’s not sure it would be welcome. Not from him, when he’d ordered her sister into the battle that killed her.

“I was — I was thinking about Jess. She and Paige,” Rose says, her voice cracking. “They were friends. How am I . . . how am I supposed to _tell_ her?”

“Oh, Rose,” Poe says, throat aching.

“Can we — I don’t wanna wake him,” Rose says, nodding to C’ai’s sleeping form.

“Come sit with me,” Poe says, reaching out a hand.

Rose takes it (and this, in itself, is somehow a relief) and they duck out, settling in the cool detritus of forest floor.

“When we find them,” Poe offers, “I’ll tell her. If you want.”

It’s not so different than the letters he can’t send.

Rose breathes in hard. “I’ll think about it,” she says.

“Whatever is best for you,” Poe says. But he knows, there is no best in this.

“It still doesn’t seem real,” Rose whispers. “We did everything together.”

“I know,” Poe agrees, because that was the way people thought about the Tico sisters — always together, a matching pair.

“I’m afraid of — of forgetting,” Rose says, worrying her medallion back and forth on its chain. “Paige was the one who remembered our mother best. I was so young when we left.”

“Was that from your mother?” Poe asks, trying to keep his tone soft and level, like he’s approaching something easily spooked. “The pendant? Paige had one too, right?”

Rose nods. “They’re a set,” she mumbles. “They’re supposed to link up together.”

“Then it’s like you’re carrying them with you,” Poe manages, not sure he’s picked the right words but hoping. “And if you didn’t have the pendent, you’d still have you.”  

Rose hugs her knees in towards her. Poe lets her sit, the night sounds of the forest a chorus around them. When her head starts tipping forward, Poe shakes her awake and sends her back.

“Get some sleep,” he says. “We leave early.”

Rose nods.

The next day, they trace their way back down, following their own trail. It’s faster downhill, but the better part of the day is still gone by the time they get back to the ship.

Beebee immediately says something insulting about how disheveled Poe is when she rolls out of the ship, because Poe apparently completely failed to appropriately socialize her.

“Look, I am _sorry_ we left you,” Poe says, sitting down heavily next to Beebee, “but we’re kind of hungry and tired, buddy. Can we make up?”

Beebee bumps her head against Poe’s elbow and he knows he’s been forgiven. The next morning, though, Beebee still insists on coming on their second hike.

“Fine,” Poe sighs. “You can come with us. But this terrain isn’t droid friendly. You’re still going to have to keep up with us.”

Beebee spins around in excitement.

C’ai laughs. “You developing a taste for adventure?” he asks Beebee.

“Beebee can hotwire almost anything,” Rose declares enthusiastically.

Rose clearly means it as a compliment and despite himself, Poe feels a little flush of pride, even though he strongly suspects somewhere in the galaxy his dad is wincing without knowing why.

The second mountain, Poe tell himself, is the one (has to be the one). The path up is steeper, doing everything short of vocally taunting them — which the howler monkeys do ably in the stead of the silent rock faces.

Rose makes a frustrated face back at one, scowling with her bangs sticking to her face.

It’s past mid-day and they’re all flagging (Beebee, despite her best efforts, does need to be lifted over certain rock formations and she’s dense) when C’ai suddenly stops and crouches. Poe recognizes that face, so he drops down beside him.

“What’re you seeing?” Poe asks, casting about.

“Look,” C’ai says, pointing to some tracks. They’re regular, even, multiple, and all leading in a single direction. They’ve been partially covered, but they’re _there_. None of them are human, but still. People are living here, on this mountain. (And Jess has always been good at making friends, with her smile and enthusiasm.)

Poe nods. “Okay,” he murmurs, his pulse in his ears. “Let’s be on the lookout.”

“The lookout for what?” Rose asks, in a hushed tone.

“These prints, they’re organized,” Poe says. “Sign that there’s higher level organized life forms around.”

Rose frowns at the ground.

“Here,” C’ai says, pointing, tracing the shape with a finger in the air above the closest track.

“Beebee,” Poe says, swallowing against the hope stuck in his throat, “think you can help us trace these?”

Beebee’s radar scans the forest floor and she nods.

Rose’s hands clutch the straps of her pack tightly.

Beebee leads them all on a twisting path up and slowly the trees become less oppressive and there are signs of life — too even tree stumps and fruiting trees cleaned of their bounty. There’s a fizzing mounting in Poe’s blood.  

Then, suddenly dropping out of the tree tops are dozen of soldiers, nearly as tall as Wookies, sleek scaled arms thick with muscle. They’re armed to the teeth and their faces are covered in dark carved masks that hide their faces, stylized like some nightmare version of a forest kyreen cat, bared teeth and protruding horns repeated in disconcerting variations over the heads of the soldiers creeping closer.

The one with the most elaborate mask lets out a barking yell. Suddenly, there are half a dozen bowcasters being pointed at them.

“We’re not here to hurt you!” Poe says, holding up his arms. “We’re just looking for our friends!”

“The blaster,” one says, very deliberate, measured Basic emerging from behind the mask. “You will drop it.”

Behind Poe’s leg, Beebee Eight is practically vibrating with tension. He can hear Rose’s too rapid breathing. Poe is holding his teeth together too tightly, clenched. They are so close, he knows it in his bones.

“Shhh, buddy. It’s okay. We’re okay,” Poe whispers to Beebee, his gut churning. “I’m going to reach for my blaster to drop it, okay?” he says to the translator. “And my team are going to put their weapons down too.”

Behind him, he can hear the sounds of C’ai unholstering and sliding his blaster along the ground. It judders to a stop a few steps ahead of Poe, who keeps very still.

“And the other one,” the spokesperson says, gesturing.

“Her, too,” Poe agrees.

“Poe?” Rose asks, a faint, angry tremble in her voice.

“It’s okay,” Poe says, not daring to turn his face toward her. “Slow movements and then you put your electro-shock prod on the ground.”

Trying to follow his own advice, trying to ignore how sweat is prickling at the back of his neck, Poe carefully telegraphs his movements as he pulls out his blaster, bending slowly at the knees to place it on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rose doing the same, dropping her prod and clenching her empty fist as she unbends.

One of the soldiers scurries over and grabs up all their weapons, darting back with them cradled in her arms. The leader barks something again and the translator nods.

“There is nothing to find here,” the translator says, turning back to Poe. “You will turn around now. You will leave us. You will not come back. You will tell no one of this mountain.”

Poe licks his lips, about to say something flippant because no, he’s not going to leave, not when he’s so, so close.

The translator continues, “You will not come back and you will tell no one of this mountain because we have found your ship.” In his head, Poe curses, fighting down the blinding red urge to punch out at something — they should’ve camouflaged better, of course locals would know the geographical features better than anyone, would notice something out of place. “And we have a band watching it right now. You will not see them but they will see you, if you do not leave.”

Then, from the hill above them comes a cloud of rising dirt and feet — “Wait,” a familiar voice calls out and Poe looks up, sees an unmistakably human body in motion, “wait, don’t hurt them, those are my friends!”

Poe’s knees feel weak.

“Jess!” Rose cries out.

“You said there would be many,” the translator says, turning to look up towards the woman — Jess, unmistakably Jess, even so suntanned and dressed like the soldiers — sounding dubious. “You said there would be ships. These are only three small ones and a droid. How can you be sure they are of your band?”

“I know them,” Jess promises, coming to stop between the soldiers and Poe, a hand to her heart. “They’re safe, I promise. This is the rescue I said was coming.”

Then she turns to face them, her forehead shiny with sweat, her hair hacked short and unfamiliar. The sight of her alive is the better than any of the dreams Poe wouldn’t let himself have.

“Jessika Pava,” Poe says, all the years they’ve known each other rushing up as a strange urge to cry. “Am I glad to see you.”

“Poe Dameron,” Jess says, her wonderful smile stretching across her face. “What the hell took you so long?”

* * *

Luke opens his eyes and finds himself standing in a park, surrounded by flowering vines, winding paths, and the remains of some crumbling marble building, age-worn and rain-riven.

Overhead, the sun is pale and in the distance, someone is playing music. Something with strings.

Luke picks a direction and follows the path, as a woman’s voice joins the strings. The rains are late, she cries, and so is the soldier who promised to be her wife. Surely, surely a letter will come with the arriving storm clouds.

Luke shivers, though the wind worrying at his hair is balmy, carrying the scent of the sea.

(Ty had been a singer. He had always been at his most grounded when he was seated cross-legged at his mother’s side in front of the local shrine, their voices ringing out among the stones.

Poe’s first visit back to Thaela after getting his new posting, he’d exclaimed over how much taller everyone was after just three standard months and cajoled Ty into giving them all a preview of what he and his mother would sing at the end of First Harvest. Luke had known then, studying Poe’s grinning, attentive face, that whatever unspoken potential was between them hadn’t faded with Poe’s departure. That it had roots.

That night, when Poe quietly let himself into Luke’s bedroom and kissed him, Luke could only lean in and kiss back, sinking into what felt inevitable.)

Luke keeps walking, automatically. Rising up in the distance, at the top of a hill, is the dome of the Assembly Hall.

He is on Chandrila, as it looked during the first days of the New Republic. Before Ty was even born, when Ben was still more a chubby-legged bundle of promise than a boy.

Of course his mind still thinks of exile and return and distance and Chandrila together.

In his mid-twenties, he’d never wanted to go back to Tatooine again (Jabba’s reign was finally finished and the ashes of his childhood long dispersed; the story was over). But he could celebrate the way the whole of Chandrila seemed to cry for joy the day Mon Mothma came home.

Luke is almost at the edge of the park when Rey appears.

“Back already?” Luke asks.

“Already?” Rey scoffs. Then her eyebrows furrow and she asks, “How long do you think it's been?”

Luke pauses and shrugs. “I have no idea, actually,” he admits. “Not years, I hope,” he adds, queasiness burning in his esophagus.

“Not years,” Rey replies quickly. “A few days, for me.”

Luke nods, dizzy.

“How long for you?” Rey asks quietly.

“There's no such thing as time here,” Luke says, automatically echoing what he’s been told.

Rey purses her lips but says nothing.

“Rey,” Luke begins. “The Resistance?”

“We’re still here,” Rey says, reaching out and tightening her hand around Luke’s left elbow.

Luke sucks in one cheek and nods. “Okay,” he mutters. “Good.”

Rey nods in return.

Luke can feel the pull forward again and points down the path. “I think I’m headed that way,” he says. “Are you coming?”

“What’s there?” Rey asks.

“The Chancellor,” Luke tells her, a quiet surety in his bones. He straightens his spine into proper posture.

“The Chancellor? Which Chancellor?” Rey asks, eyes narrowing.

“Chancellor Mothma,” Luke says. “Everyone after her,” Luke shrugs. “Most of them were fine. Some of them weren’t great. The same failings you’d find anywhere, I guess. Mothma . . . ”

Luke’s bad at this, capturing what she’d meant to people, when he had never quite believed like one of the truly faithful. But he tries anyway, because it had been a power that was almost tangible.

“She was the head of the Rebel Alliance’s Council, the one with all the ideas. People saw her and they saw the future Republic, I guess.”   

“She was like Leia,” Rey summarizes.

Luke grins. “Kind of. Leia’s a little more . . . shouty.”

Rey curls her chin down towards her neck, an appalled frown flooding her face.

Luke laughs. “I can say that. She’s my _sister_.”

“Which is why you should come home,” Rey rebounds quickly.

Luke hisses a breath in, holding it in his throat. “I am trying,” he finally manages.

Rey glances over and her cheek twitches into a wince. Still, all she offers is, “Maybe you could try a little harder.”

Then, abruptly, her eyebrows wrinkle and she winks out of presence.

“Learning to make an exit,” Luke comments to the empty space beside him now. “Obi-Wan was good at that, too.”

He scuffs his boot into the ground and then continues down the path, the sound of the woman singing faint in the distance, until he comes to a bridge, arching over a meandering stream.

The Chancellor is standing in the middle, hands resting on the railing.

“Commander Skywalker,” she says, turning around to face him.  
  
“Chancellor,” Luke responds. The bodily urge to salute is still ingrained in his muscles. But he folds his hands together, one over the other, and bows instead.

She meets his eyes and gestures him over. Suddenly, there’s a small table and a pair of chairs, ornate curlicues of metalwork coming together.

“Please, join me,” she says. “I presume that’s what we’re both here for.”

Luke slides into one of the chairs, eyebrows inching up in surprise. “Is this not where you usually . . . are?”

At that, Mothma’s mouth twitches into a smile and her cool eyes sparkle with amusement. “It is and isn’t,” she replies, smoothing down her skirt as she sits across from him. “Chandrila is of course my home, regardless of death. But no, I suppose I don’t typically find myself giving audiences in Ma’ahila Park.”

Luke looks around, wonders what part of the attachment to this place is his, then. He’d lived on Chandrila for a few years after the end of the war, in so much as he’d had an apartment near Leia and Han’s home that served as a permanent address.

He never spent much time in the park.

“It is rather flattering, that you would think of me and this place together,” Mothma comments, turning her head to take in their surroundings. Ahead of her an orange-winged butterfly alights for a moment on a pale blue flower, then moves on. “Ma’ahila is one of our great achievements.”

“Yes, sir,” Luke murmurs, without any real conscious thought.

Mothma quirks her lips slightly. “Do you disagree?” she asks. “It would seem to be an odd choice of locations to revisit if you’re not fond of it.”

Luke dips his head slightly to one side, contemplative. “It’s beautiful,” he agrees readily. “It’s so green. I had never seen anything like that in a city before, when I first came here.”

“If I’m remembering correctly, you’d hardly seen any cities at all, if they weren’t battlegrounds,” Mothma comments.

Luke laughs. “That’s true.”

“You’ll forgive me if I go too far,” the Chancellor says, folding her hands together on the table, speaking with that same solid core of surety she always carried, “but I imagine taking in the foliage isn’t why you’re here now.” Her cool blue eyes focus on his face closely. “Coming to death still alive is an unusual thing, even for Jedi.”

“The Force is mysterious,” Luke says, his eyes drawn out past the Chancellor without actually focusing on anything. There's an uneasiness curling at the base of his neck.

“Commander,” Mothma says, “please do us both the favor of not stalling. It’s your time that's wasting, not mine.”

Luke clenches a fist on his thigh and then slowly, deliberately uncurls his fingers.

“What if all we did when we rebuilt was make the same mistakes?” he asks.

The Chancellor keeps her eyes on him and for several long breathes says nothing.

“The same mistakes? No, I think we made our own mistakes,” she finally says. “Governments may rise and fall and so may institutions, but I refuse to believe that the New Republic is inevitably fated for destruction.”

“I didn't mean —” Luke winces. (He’d been there to see lives extinguish themselves over the nebulous dream of justice.)

“Have regrets if you have them,” Mothma says, voice even. “I certainly do. But to dismiss all that we did, that you did, as a recycling of the same missteps that lead us to the fall of the Republic is a cynic’s excuse. It’s lazy. And I expect more of you, Commander.”

“But we did make mistakes,” Luke says, throat tight. “Even with everything eating at them, the first Republic and the old Jedi Order survived thousands of years. We didn’t even make it thirty years!”

“ _Is_ the Republic dead?” Mothma asks, a chill in her voice. She inclines her stately head slightly to one side. “Is the spirit of Alderaan dead? Are there no more Jedi at all? You see a different galaxy than I do.”

Luke slumps back in his uncomfortable metal chair, feeling the curl of the armrests biting into his forearms. There’s no response to that he can give, so he lets silence fall between them.

Finally, he clears his throat to say, “I let so many people down. I never understood how you managed it, all the expectations put on you. They all wanted so much from you. They talked about you like you were Justice herself.”

Mothma laughs, a short, sharp thing. “Who else was left who would lead?” she asks. “I may have had ambitions, but leading the Alliance and the Republic was as much a question of a lack of options as it was a question of my capacities. A situation I’m sure you can appreciate.”

Luke looks over her shoulder, at a black-winged bird flinging itself off a pliant branch into the air. “In my case, I don’t think I really rose to the occasion.”

Mothma leans back in her chair, resting her chin gently on the back of her hand. “And what would have success have looked like?” she asks. “How would it have been achieved?” She shakes her head. “It is our job to have a vision but know we will fall short. No battle goes as planned, no negotiation. Why would raising children? Why would rebuilding an order of living people?”

She pauses and studies Luke’s gaze, gaze penetrating. She was always disarming, Luke thinks. It was part of what made people stand to attention before her, that sense of being read and assessed. It’s no less powerful now, in death.

“Everything but what happened is hypothetical now,” Mothma concludes.   

“Yes, sir,” Luke agrees, swallowing.

Mothma nods. “I do not begrudge you despair,” the Chancellor says, softer now. “But the young man I knew was anchored in hope.”

Luke shakes his head slightly, feeling tears beginning to itch at his eyes. “That was a long time ago,” he says.

“He also believed in redemption in a way I could not. A way I refuse to,” Mothma replies. “So tell me, what makes Darth Vader more worthy of your compassion than Luke Skywalker, Commander?”

Luke darts his eyes quickly up to meet Mothma’s, fighting a wince. Mothma had been one of the closed circle of people that he and Leia told the whole truth to and he’d seen the way she’d taken in a hard, disbelieving breath at Luke’s recounting of how he’d come to walk out of the Emperor’s throne room still breathing.

“It’s not for me to say, though, is it? Whether I deserve to be forgiven?” Luke asks.

“Then stand and be judged,” Mothma declares. “Give the people their choice.”

It feels like an order. It feels like a mission.

Luke pushes back his chair and rises while the Chancellor does the same, in a single fluid movement. She holds out her hand and Luke takes it and bows over it. Then he steps back. In the distance, again, he hears the plaintive singing calling him.

“Do you know where you’re headed?” Mothma asks.

“Yes, sir,” Luke says, the certainty settling over him.

“Good,” Mothma nods. “Consider yourself dismissed, Commander.”

Luke nods back and turns back down the winding path.

“Commander?” Mothma calls.

“Sir?” Luke asks, looking back.

Mothma’s eyebrows are drawn together. “I believe your mother would like to see you,” she says. “If you can find your way to her.”

Luke’s breath stutters. He nods. “Thank you,” he says, not sure his words really carry with the wind.

Around him, he can already feel a dissolving, so he closes his eyes tightly, feels a world fall away.

* * *

“You did so good,” Poe mutters against Jess’s hair, staring out beyond to the damaged but still whole passenger ship, the hundred odd Resistance fighters surrounding them, celebrating, pulling the tall local soldiers and villagers into dancing and uneven embraces.

“Yes, I did,” Jess laughs, pulling back out of their hug. “Shit, Dameron, are you getting sentimental in your old age?”

“Excuse me?” Poe asks, feigning affront. “Is that disrespect I hear?”

“Always,” Jess promises, a solemn hand to her heart. Then her face sets into something serious. “After we get the ship fixed, we’re going to Snap and Kare, right?”

“Snap and Kare?” Poe echoes, his heart beating wildly in his chest. “They’re _alive_?”

“You haven’t heard from them?” Jess asks, eyes wide. “They found General Calrissian. I mean, I’m pretty sure, anyway?”

“No, we haven’t heard from them!” Poe says. “We thought — they left for Republic space right after we evacuated you, and after we left D’Qar, we didn’t hear anything.” Poe shakes his head violently, trying to process. “Wait. General Calrissian’s alive? How do you even know that?”

“Sit down,” Jess commands, pushing at Poe’s shoulder. “Let me talk.”

Poe collapses onto the ground, blinking. “Catch me up,” he demands.

“We bounced that letter off a _lot_ of satellites,” Jess says, settling herself cross-legged nearby and leaning in to be heard above raucous laughter ringing out around them. “Then one day, we got a letter back, from someone who said they were my cousin. It was — it was Kare. It had to be. She remembered stuff from the Academy, like,” Jess pulls her knees up to her chest and wrinkles her nose (but she’s smiling a little, like she can’t help it), “embarrassing shit I wish she’d forget. And she said that she wanted to come visit me but she didn’t know when that would be. That if I could come to her, she’d be on Enivah in three months, with the Baron. I figured —” Jess shrugs. “That could only be one person.”  

“Enivah?” Poe echoes, mind swirling. “Why’re they going to Enivah?” It’s a planet whose strategic value waned long generations ago and these days, it’s mostly known for being old. ( _And close to home_ , his mind pokes at him, bringing up images of Yavin’s bountiful, beloved jungles.)

Jess shrugs. “The black market, maybe? I assume not for the ruins. But listen, can you focus for a second? I got that letter twelve weeks ago. They could be headed to Enivah _right now_. We could go find them, bring them back!”

Poe taps his finger rapidly against his collar bone. “Are they coming here, after Enivah?”

“I don’t know! All she said was that they wanted to, but they didn’t know when they could. But we can find them,” Jess says, speeding up. “You’ve got an extra ship. We’re not just stuck here anymore!”

“What are you so excited about?” C’ai asks, from where he’s suddenly emerged from the revelry.

Jess takes a big breath in and starts her story again, concluding, “Which is why I think we should go find them, as soon as we’ve got the ship up and running again.” She turns to Poe, interrogatory. “So?” she demands.

When Poe met her for the first time, Jess had been freshly seventeen and faintly freckled. Entirely too young for the ensign’s insignia she was sporting, Poe can’t help but think now. It’s been twelve years and too much else since then.

He’d been so certain of his own capacity for command back then, armored by both arrogance and ignorance. Now, here, he has nothing good to give her in exchange for her loyal heart, no path he can approve that won’t be crushing to her and to himself.

(But this, they’d always told him, would be the price of seeking command. _As open-hearted as you might be_ , Commander Relan-Deyi had told him, the day he’d gotten leadership of Rampant Squadron, _you will also ask unkind things of your people and they will do them. And none of you will be the same after._ Poe wonders, sometimes, what she suspected was in store for him.

He has not yet cried for Hosnia, but every shot he rained down on Starkiller was her training, still in his muscles.)

Poe’s evidently not the only one who knows where this conversation is going, because C’ai folds his hands together primly and says, “Our orders are to escort the ship back. Not make our way past dozens of First Order patrols to find three people.”

“C’ai, c’mon!” Jess says, throwing up her arms. “It’s Kare and Snap and _General Calrissian_. And these folks are trained fighters, it’s not like they’re defenseless. Don’t you want to get our friends back?”

“Of course I want to get our friends back! I just don’t think now’s the moment for us, of all people, to be ignoring orders!” C’ai bursts out, head swiveling to look at Poe.

Poe flinches back.

Jess’s eyes flick back and forth between them and she asks, “What? What happened?”

Poe can’t hold her gaze. “I made some bad calls,” he offers, too short, working his jaw.

C’ai crosses his arms. “ _We_ made some bad calls,” he says. “And by bad calls, the master of dramatic understatement here means we,” C’ai clears his throat, “mutinied.”

Jess blinks. “What?” she asks. The hesitance of the word grinds at Poe.

“Leia was half-dead. We were losing ships, we were losing people,” Poe says, some fleeting shadow of the despair pressing its hands to his ribs. “It felt like all the doors were closing around us.”

Jess is wide-eyed and rapidly rubbing her palms up and down her shins. Finally she bursts out, “How the hell are you both not court-martialed?”

C’ai reaches out and puts a large, gentle hand on Jess's elbow. “You were not there. We were — it was being hunted. Picked off. There are more of us here than there are on base.”

“Couldn’t get court-martialed because we don't have enough people left to afford it,” Poe sums up.

Jess drops her legs back into a cross-legged seat, staring blankly at the ground, like it’s all just now hitting her.

“General Organa did shoot Poe,” C’ai offers, conciliatory.

Jess looks up at him and abruptly snorts a laugh.

“Thanks. Thank you for sharing that,” Poe says.

C’ai shrugs. “It's true.”

Jess’s laughter fades into an unsteady hiccup and she scrubs at her face. “What a fucking year,” she says, hands dropping to the ground. A little wave of dust rises up on impact and settles slowly.

“We need to go back,” Poe says, taking a deep breath in. The air tastes heavy, of roasting meat and smoke and humidity. “I want to find Kare and Snap, too. But we can’t afford to wait indefinitely and we can’t leave everyone. We need to see this through.”

C’ai nods, once, eyes on Poe.

“Okay,” Jess says, taking in a slow breath and sighing it out. “Okay. Let’s finish this thing.”

Of course the decision isn’t the action. It takes days for Rose and a handful of soldiers with frigate engine knowledge to sort through the repairs. As they wait and follow Rose’s hands-on-hips directions, Poe finds himself only able to sleep in snatches. He wakes from dreams with his heart beating too fast, his jaw aching in a way that means he’s been grinding his teeth. Seeing the piles of the Resistance sleeping sprawled out in little groups beneath the trees — there are Jess and Rose, curled up side-by-side, Jess resting a hand on Rose’s arm like she’s trying to hold her here, keep her grounded even in grief. There’s the cheerful Sullustan artillery captain who Bastian always lost to at cards and beside her, the communications officer with the intricate vine tattoos; all of them alive and breathing and substantial, not an illusion — helps bring his pulse rate back down, but can’t quite ease the prickling sensation at the back of his neck.

Jess seems nervous, too, which doesn’t help. “It’s a big ship,” she mutters, scratching at her shoulder. “I just don’t want to bring First Order attention here.” She looks out from the storeroom the Yarunis have lent them as a planning space. “These people kept us all alive just because they could. We don’t have much they want — they’re not interested in leaving the planet, they think our blasters make for shitty hunting, and they’re already harvesting a surplus in what they need. They just want to be left alone.”

“So, we’ll give them that,” Poe says.

Together, Jess, C’ai, Poe and the handful of astrographers chart a course off Olia-é-Yarun. It’s circuitous and time-consuming, but unlikely to bring them anywhere close to the First Order patrols at the edge of star system.  

The translator from the jungle raid — his name is Ghaleebayan, or maybe it’s a nickname; Poe’s still not clear on that even after nine days in the village, which is probably why he doesn’t get sent on diplomatic missions — studies their charts and asks, “You will go back to this war?”

Jess looks up at him, giving something between a smile and a grimace, and says something halting in the local language.

The village head responds, slow and rumbling, resting her large, scaly hand on top of Jess’s hair and patting once, twice.

Ghaleebayan turns to Poe and C’ai. “The chief councilor says peace is most . . . honorable.” He pauses, mulling over his word choice, then nods, “You will say honorable. But loyalty is also a virtue in a community.” He hums, deep-throated.

It’s a full twelve standard days before they get up in the air again. C’ai departs first, taking the freighter they’d come in to scout out the way. From the control room of the frigate, Poe watches the Resistance fighters board, many of them looking back over their shoulders, shouting final good-byes, fragrant garlands around their necks. It seems almost cruel to be doing this.

When they lift off, the canopy trembles around and then beneath them, becoming a solid, indistinguishable greeness as they climb into the atmosphere.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Rose says, resting her head on Jess’s shoulder as they breach the dark expanse of space.

Jess wraps an arm around Rose’s shoulder and squeezes. “Me, too,” she says. Her gaze strays back to the viewport and Olia-é-Yarun growing smaller in the distance and her mouth tightens. Then she drops a kiss on Rose’s forehead, comforting.

Poe looks away, back to the command station monitors. “Prepare for first hyperspace jump,” he orders.

The trip to Olia-é-Yarun only took two days, but the journey back, in its illicit steps, takes five. Everyone is on high alert the whole time, but they manage to duck any First Order patrols.

As soon as Jess is hustled through a medical check-in, Poe snags her and C’ai for a meeting with Leia, has her repeat the whole message from Kare again.

“They’re likely on Enivah right now and I don’t know for how long. We’d like permission to go. See if we can find them and get us all back together again,” Jess finishes.

“And the letter writer was definitely Kare Kun?” Leia questions.

“I swear it couldn’t be anyone else,” Jess says.

Leia knits her fingers together in front of her.  “You had this information before you left Olia-é-Yarun?” she asks Poe.

“Yes, sir,” Poe says, keeping his chin level. “I know General Calrissian’s irreplaceable,” Poe begins.

Leia cracks a smile and leans in towards C’ai to say, conspiratorial, “Well, I wouldn’t go saying that to his face. Lando’s got enough self-confidence as it is.”

Poe bites down on a smile and continues, “But getting our people on Olia-é-Yarun back in the fold was the priority. We’re in a stronger position regrouped.”

Poe tries to keep resolutely still as Leia studies him with narrowed eyes.

Finally she nods and says, “Good call, Commander.”

Poe straightens, like his spine is being pulled upward. “Sir?” he asks, more hesitant than he means to sound.  

Leia raises her eyebrows a little, some faint hint of amusement hidden there. “You heard me, Dameron. Consider yourself reinstated. Now, why don’t you all give me the plan for this rendezvous you’re proposing?” she continues on.

Poe feels a little dizzy.

“The embedded spy droids we’ve recovered contact with have been sending reports of large-scale First Order troop movements. They're moving in — towards the Core worlds of the Republic,” Leia says, folding her hand behind her back. “How are you getting in and out without being noticed?”

C’ai begins, as if absolutely nothing just happened. “With the new starfighters Maz Kanata supplied us with,” he says, “we’re no longer immediately recognizable as either Resistance or Republic fighters. We go in under the radar.”

“We keep the formation small,” Jess picks up, “like a civilian private security group escorting a business person on a negotiating tour. That’s how we get back.”

“We’re meeting our boss on Enivah and helping him escort some goods back to corporation headquarters,” Poe finishes, after taking a second too long. “That’s the cover.”

“Did you three practice for this?” Leia asks, with a wry twist to her mouth.

“Yes, sir,” C’ai says, serene.

Poe does his best not to sigh.

“Preparation _is_ half the fight,” Leia comments. “Give Connix the letter for verification,” she tells Jess. “Let’s see if we can get anything else out of it. And you two, go down to hangar bay, inspect the new starfighters, select what you need for the trip. My team will put together reports and orders to pass along to Lando.”

“General,” Jess asks, “why Enivah? What’s there? We couldn’t figure it out.”

“Of course. This was well before your time,” Leia says. “Enivah . . . Lando has has some old friends there, from the Civil War, and before. I imagine he’s cashing in a few favors.”

Poe nods slowly, filing away the knowledge.

“It’s settled, then. You head out tomorrow. Take your pick of the new starfighters, get yourselves to Enivah without attracting any First Order attention, and bring back Lando,” Leia declares. “Good work, all of you. Dismissed.”

It’s hours later when Poe finishes going over materials with Connix in the landing bay.

“Okay,” he says, the exhaustion heavy in his muscles. “I think we’re done. I for one am headed to bed.”

“I wouldn’t go back to your quarters,” Connix says conversationally.

“Why?” Poe asks, slowly.

“This base wasn’t designed for more than fifty people living in it full time, so we had to double up on room assignments,” Connix replies.

“Okay, so there’s someone else there,” Poe says. “Why does that mean I shouldn’t go in at all? Connix, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! But based on what I observed when Sergeant Hilian was let of out the med bay, xe has some people who are _very_ happy see xer,” Connix says. “So, you know. You just might not want to go back to your quarters right now.”

“I need to sleep, Kaydel!” Poe says, throwing up his hands.

“You’re . . . innovative,” Connix says, starting to walk backwards away from him, her looped braids swinging, giving her an entirely false look of sweet innocence. “I believe you’ll figure something out.”

And of course, the answer’s right there, even if it feels a little ridiculous. An indulgence Poe maybe shouldn’t give himself because some part of it will ache.

But Poe finds himself headed towards the med bay anyway. He’d go regardless — he couldn’t leave without seeing Luke, not now that he has the option. He lets himself into Luke’s room quietly.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Poe says, sitting down heavily on Luke’s bed. “How’re you doing? Same, huh?” Luke’s hair isn’t actually out of place, but Poe pushes it back anyway, just for something to do. “I thought we had a deal. I was gonna go be heroic and rescue some people and you were gonna wake up. I kept up my end of things. Jess is back. Where’s the reciprocity, huh?”

Luke doesn't respond, of course.

“You are really fucking stubborn,” Poe observes. “Obstinate.”

Poe bends down to untie his boots and let them slip heavy onto the ground. He pulls his legs up onto the bed, careful not to disturb the monitoring devices stuck to Luke’s skin as he eases himself down under the blanket until he's curled along Luke’s body.

“Since you’re not talking, you don’t get to judge,” Poe says, sliding an arm across Luke’s waist. “You don’t have a monopoly on sleep.”

Poe wants Luke to shake his head and smile, slide a warm hand up and down over Poe’s side. Poe knows all too well that won’t happen, so instead he presses a kiss to Luke’s shoulder, and closes his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

You are bound to find some trace of the departed;

Keep up this melancholy wandering for a few more days.

\- Nasir Kazmi, translated by Nauman Naqvi in _Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi_ by Anand Vivek Taneja, 259.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, Luke is in a bed, warm and drowsy, weighed down by blankets and — limbs. There’s dark curly hair tickling his cheek and strong legs entangled with his own.

“Poe?” Luke whispers, electric disbelief in his bones. (He buried this so far down, told himself to let go, because then the grief couldn’t eat this too.)

“Uh-huh, that’s me,” Poe mumbles, shifting around, nose rubbing against Luke’s jaw. “Lemme sleep a little longer?”

Luke's terror is a jagged and difficult thing, when above and around him the whispering tree branches seem to want him to lie back, be at ease ( _what does that mean?_ ). But this is Poe, and of all the things Luke has ever wanted for him, remaining alive has always been the first and most important.

“You can hear me?” Luke asks, his muscles locked in by fear.

Poe squints up at him, smiling drowsily. “Yeah? You’re literally right there,” he says, lifting his head and blowing a breath across the shell of Luke’s ear. It’s cool. Luke flinches in surprise. None of this should be possible. Because Poe’s not dead. He can’t be.

“What’s going on with you?” Poe asks, blinking slowly and trailing warm fingers across Luke’s collarbone.

“Where are we?” Luke asks, sitting up and scrambling out of the impossible bed to try to get his bearings.

This isn’t a memory. It’s happening right now. The last time Luke saw Poe Dameron in real life, he’d been in his Fleet fatigues, throwing Luke a wink over his shoulder, still not quite thirty, an easy self-confidence written into his gait. This Poe has new lines at the corners of his eyes and hints of hide-and-seek gray hair just by his temples. He looks like he's settled into himself; he looks like weariness has weathered him. (And Luke has missed it.)

And that’s too much, too gut-wrenching to dwell on, so Luke focuses on the mystery instead. What is this place and why does it feel so different than everywhere else Luke’s been on this journey? How can Poe be here?

But he is, lying right there in bed. The bed is a tree. Or the tree is a bed. Or both at the same time. And it doesn't make sense. But the air around him laughs, murmuring that _of course it all makes sense, of course_. The luminescent leaves whisper-sway above them, carrying a faint scent of rain.

There are no walls, really. There’s just the suggestion of them, like they could be there if he asked for them, white-washed and clean. Beyond that, Luke sees miles of rolling jungle like on Yavin, that melt strangely into the orchard on Thaela in spring, fragrant and flowering. The room itself feels alive. The half-there fluttering curtains smell like the washing soap Ekta bought in bulk for the temple’s laundry. All of it is impossible to get a grasp on, like all Luke’s senses have melted into each other. But everything around him is warm and welcoming and wants Luke to return to the bed.

“Where is this?” Luke asks wonderingly, turning to stare at Poe again. He’s still sprawled out, beautiful limbs and tousled hair, entirely and impossibly lovely. It makes Luke’s chest ache. “Where are you?”

“Right here at home?” Poe asks, sitting up against the smooth bark of the headboard and starting to frown. The room starts to shimmer strangely, just at the edge of sight. The branches of tree-bed sway. “Are you feeling okay?”

This is, Luke thinks, more odd than death, the sense of reality both pressing and illusive.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Luke presses, because he needs to understand.

The sky rumbles ominously.

Poe’s eyes flit back and forth. “We brought Jess back,” he says. “And we’re going to go find Kare and Snap,” he nods, more sure now.

Around them the air hums more insistently with singing insects and distant birds. Luke fights against the call to let go of his questions and reach out for Poe and forces himself to think.

“And they’re all okay?” Luke prompts.

“Oh, yeah, they’re great,” Poe says automatically. “Jess made friends with these tall recluses who use bowcasters. Leia’s gonna promote her for sure.”

Luke blinks. “Okay,” he agrees. “And Kare and Snap?”

Poe hums a little. “They found General Calrissian. I’m kind of jealous,” he says contemplatively. “No, I definitely am jealous.”

The muscles in Luke’s back relax minutely. Lando’s always been good with impossible situations, at reinvention.

“And now you’re at home?” Luke asks, looking around again at the hints of places melded together, beautiful and strange.

Poe blinks slowly and nods. “Of course we’re at home,” he says, with utter certainty.

Luke swallows, lets himself come to the impossible conclusion. “How often do you remember your dreams when you wake up?” he asks.

“What?” Poe asks, his dark eyebrows drawn together.

Luke has never done this before, walked into someone’s dream — or maybe been drawn in is closer to the truth. Everything around him like an an embrace and Luke’s muscles so badly want to relax into it, are crying for it.

“Do you think you’ll remember this?” Luke asks again, fingers almost shaking with the longing to touch, even if none of this is real, even if it’s not really Poe’s body.

“Why would I forget?” Poe laughs.

“I miss you,” Luke confesses, because if there’s even a chance that he’s really speaking to Poe,  he wants to tell the truth. “I’ve missed you for a very long time.”

“Luke?” Poe asks, eyebrows drawn together. He shakes his head, like trying to dislodge an unruly thought. “Come back to bed,” he insists, holding out his hand. Like this is an everyday moment, as if they’ve seen each other just the day before.

“Okay,” Luke agrees, pulled to Poe, like he’s compelled, or no, like before him is the best of all possible choices. Luke climbs back onto the bed, sliding closer on his knees until he can stretch out beside Poe, who reaches out and locks one of Luke’s ankles between his own.

“That’s better,” Poe says, eyes flickering shut, a soft smile gracing his face. “Hi.”

“Hi, Poe,” Luke whispers back, almost trembling with disbelief that Poe’s mind would still let Luke be here after all these years. It is more than he has ever let himself believe.

Then, suddenly, he finds himself smiling. “Do you usually sleep in your dreams? Do you sleep dreaming about sleeping?”

“Is this a riddle?” Poe asks, opening his eyes and squinting at Luke. “Do I get a prize if I get the right answer?”

“Sure,” Luke says, still drinking in the sight of him.

Poe wriggles around, pushing Luke onto his back and draping himself over Luke’s whole body. He plants his chin contemplatively on the hand he has resting on Luke’s chest.

“Then . . . yes,” he says, eyes narrowed, dragging out the sibilance of the word uncertainly.

He searches Luke’s face and Luke can’t help laughing — here Poe is, after years of subsisting on memories that have grown thin like paper.

“No?” Poe tries again. “Is this even a yes-no question?”

“I have no idea,” Luke says.

Poe taps his fingers against Luke’s chest and says, “You aren’t very good at this game.”

“I didn’t know we were playing a game,” Luke replies.

“You started it!” Poe laughs.

Luke reaches out to thread his fingers through Poe’s hair — it’s shorter than the last time Luke saw him, tamer. “When did this happen?” he asks, tugging lightly on a strand.

“You don’t like it? I think I look dashing,” Poe says, pulling an exaggerated pout. Then he shrugs and sighs, “The helmet hair was killing me. It had to be controlled.”

He narrows his eyes at Luke then and there’s another strange tremor through the room. As if whatever this might be is having trouble holding together the scene, when Luke’s admitted to no longer knowing Poe the way he used to, all the little preferences and annoyances.

“Hey, shh,” Luke says, smoothing a hand along Poe’s shoulder, marveling at the bare skin. “I like it.”

Beneath Luke’s fingers, Poe’s muscles relax and he drops his chin back onto his hands, throwing Luke a lazy wink. “Of course you do,” he says.  

Luke lets him settle in, basking in the weight of his body against Luke’s. But there’s so much Luke’s been missing, so he can’t help ask, “Come up here?” as he traces a finger over the curve of Poe's ear.

Poe lifts his head and raises his eyebrows, sunny and suggestive, before shifting up closer to Luke.

“Something I can help with?” Poe asks, grinning brightly down at Luke.

Luke lets an amused breath out through his nose. “Will you kiss me?” he asks, letting his fingers trace up over Poe’s rib cage and circle around to planes of his shoulder blades, greedy. It’s all more than he should ask for, but he can’t help but want whatever Poe is willing to give.

“Mmm,” Poe murmurs, leaning in, “absolutely.”

Their lips meet, warm and soft and so unbelievably _real_. Luke’s fingers tremble as he reaches out to rest them along the vulnerable skin at the back of Poe’s neck.

Poe pulls back for a breath, just a breath, but Luke follows him, curling up toward him.

“Hey,” Poe murmurs, one warm hand rucking up Luke’s shirt, resting along the curve of Luke's ribs, “hey, I’m right here."

 _So stay_ , Luke wants to say. He doesn’t. It’s not a request he of all people can make. Not to anyone, but certainly not to Poe.

But for this moment, Poe is here and if this is all Luke will ever get again, he wants as much as Poe will give. He pulls Poe down again, sinking into the pillows beneath him, into the heat of kissing Poe.

Poe makes an impatient noise, pressing in, demanding now with his tongue and his teeth and his hands. Luke would give him anything, wants to. His hands can’t seem to settle on where to land, given so much bare skin after so long without. But then Poe pulls out of their enclosed orbit for a second as he rearranges himself, shifting his weight onto a forearm. He presses his forehead against Luke’s temple, breathing in and then —     

“Did you just yawn?” Luke whispers, trying not to shake with laughter. “That’s flattering.”

Instead of answering, Poe raises a finger, tips Luke’s chin up as he dips his mouth down to press kisses along the line of Luke’s throat.

He’s so aware of every point of connection, Poe’s lips on his skin, Poe’s finger curled gently against his chin, his right hand grasping at the curve of Poe’s shoulder, the overlap of their legs.

“Are you trying to distract me?” Luke asks, feeling a little hazy, his eyes caught on the tangle of branches above them, resplendent with unfurled leaves.

“I’m trying to kiss you,” Poe says, lifting his head, his frown exaggeratedly aggrieved.

“Oh. Well, you should do that,” Luke whispers.

Poe smiles, just a slight, warm upturn of his lips. “Okay,” he agrees, inching up to nuzzle at Luke’s jaw, humming and gripping lightly at Luke’s shoulder when Luke turns his head for a proper kiss. They settle like that, Poe draped across Luke, lingering with intent on his lower lip. Luke buries his fingers back into the mess of Poe’s curls, an unvoiced request for him to stay close.

Finally, Poe pulls back to smile and blink slowly, radiating a quiet, sleepy satisfaction. He rests his head on Luke’s shoulder, one hand sweeping up and down along Luke’s torso.

“Tired?” Luke asks, pushing Poe’s hair back from his temple, indulging himself in the familiar gesture.

“Yeah.” Poe sighs. “I wanna kiss you. But I also want to take a nap.”  

“You’ve been having trouble sleeping,” Luke says, frowning. He doesn’t know _how_ he knows that — picking up on other people’s thoughts and feelings doesn’t work like that in reality — but everything here is Poe’s and along with the warmth and the desire and the sweetness in the air, there is an undercurrent of deep weariness.

Poe gives half a shrug, shifting around until he’s curled along Luke’s side, one leg hooked over Luke’s. He closes his eyes. “I’m okay,” he mumbles. “Doin’ better now.”

Luke aches at that. “Good,” he whispers. “That’s good.” He swallows and then presses a kiss to Poe’s forehead. “Hey, you want to take a nap, we’ll do that.”

Poe smiles, opening his eyes only partially. “That’s a good plan. I like that plan,” he declares, pushing himself up just a bit to kiss Luke once more, soft and uncoordinated, catching the edge of Luke’s upper lip and his cheek.

Luke leans into it, pressing in with a little edge of desperation. Their impossible reprieve is drawing to a close. He can feel it. He wants to cling; he wants Poe to rest.

“Okay. Okay, we’ll do that,” Luke says, when finally, impossibly, he pulls away. He squeezes at Poe’s upper arm, the practiced muscle there. “But. Poe — just. Take care of yourself. Please? With whatever you’re doing.”

“Okay,” Poe mumbles slowly, muffled, as he settles more deeply into bed. “But I’m just goin’ to sleep.”

Luke swallows and closes his own eyes. He can sense his surroundings crumbling away. Like erosion, like a rockslide.

* * *

Poe comes awake in slow waves, low beeping monitors filtering into his hearing. He knows, cloudily, that he needs to get up. There are places he needs to be. But sleep like soothing waves calls to him, the warmth in his limbs and the warmth cradled against him all the more tempting after so many restless nights.

But then the reason why he's been sleeping badly plunges down over him, cold and sharp (the war, the loss, everyone still missing) and Poe sits up and _remembers_.

“Luke?” he asks, staring down intently at Luke's slowly, softly breathing body beside him. “Luke, are you awake?” he demands, shaking at Luke’s right shoulder. “C’mon,” he hisses, a growing desperation bitter at the back of his throat. “Wake up! We were just talking!”

Luke’s head rolls to the side with the force of Poe’s pushing. Nasua burns its way up Poe’s esophagus. Poe forces himself to breath in, out, even as he can.

“Luke,” Poe says, curling down towards his ear. “Hey.” Poe lets his forehead rest against Luke’s temple, whispering, “Sweetheart, _please_.”

Luke keeps breathing but he doesn’t wake. Poe feels like his chest is being flattened.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he snaps together at some point. He has a mission, a set time when he has to be ready to leave. And he has news to share.

He corners Leia and Rey in Leia’s office, after sending what he knows had to be a fairly incomprehensible comm message.

“Care to explain what exactly was so urgent that you had to share with just the two of us?” Leia asks, tapping her ringed fingers against the echoing metal of the desk.

“This is going to sound insane,” Poe immediately admits, still standing. “But I think — I think I might have talked to Luke last night. In a dream.”

He expects, even hopes for, challenge or laughter.

Instead, Leia leans forward, steepling her fingers together. “And did he talk back, Dameron?”

“Yeah,” Poe says, fighting the urge to fidget.

Rey frowns. “But you aren't —” she wiggles her fingers vaguely. “Is he?” she asks Leia.

“No,” Poe says, answering for himself.

Leia speaks over him anyway, offering, “No, just irritatingly lucky.”

“Then how?” Rey asks.

Leia shrugs. “My brother was never good at the idea that rules applied to him,” she says, with a little smile. “No one ever bothered to tell him some things are impossible until he'd already done them, or decided he would.”

Rey nods, slow and thoughtful, and Poe ought to care about her learning, but his skin is itching.

“Anyway, I mean, I think it was him. He knew I was dreaming. That never happens to me,” Poe says, tripping over his words. “He asked me, something like where I was, or what I remembered doing last.”

“But,” Rey frowns. “How come you could just talk to him? It’s always so hard for me, to find the place where he is.” She shakes her head. “Why _you_?”

Poe sets his teeth together, scrambling for a good, neutral phrasing. “We were . . . we were close, before.”

Rey tilts her head slightly, eyebrows knit. “You were . . .” she makes a sudden face. “Oh, _what_?”

Leia purses her lips, clearly amused. Poe contemplates spontaneous combustion.

Rey shakes her head vigorously. “Okay, okay, whatever! I don’t — But did you get anything useful from him?”

“It was a dream,” Poe says, shoulders inching up defensively. “I didn’t know what was happening. I mean, I told him some stuff. I said something about General Calrissian, I think.”

Rey pulls a face. “That’s it?” she asks, shaking her head.

Leia keeps looking at him though, that investigative gaze like she’s seeing beneath the skin to muscles and organs and veining.

“How did he seem?” she asks.

Poe’s chest is tight and his mind is blank. How _had_ Luke seemed? Warm, solid, like a reward from Poe’s mind to himself.

“Lucid?” he offers. “Like I said, I think he knew it was a dream.” He pushes his teeth at the inside of his lower lip. “Where’d he go, when I woke up?” he asks Rey, not sure he’s ready to know.

“I don’t know,” Rey says. “He goes lots of places. I see them better now but they're not . . . For me? He keeps saying there are people he needs to see.”

Poe has any number of questions and doesn’t even know how to phrase them. But then the alarm on his comm goes off.

“Poe, we’re about to start our loading check,” Jess’s voice begins. “Where are you?”

Poe straightens his shoulders and Leia nods at him, a dismissal.

“On my way,” he reports.

* * *

The sound hits Luke first, the bright hum and whizz of traffic. He blinks and is overcome by the brightness blazing from the buildings and speeders and countless other sources Luke can’t even identify. He’s somewhere high up, layers of city clawing up towards the atmosphere above him and winding away into the depths below his feet. The psychic cacophony of millions upon millions upon millions of beings all condensed together pulses in his brain.

Coruscant is the rudest of awakenings.

Luke needs quiet, needs calm, and can feel it calling from somewhere ahead. He walks instinctively, tracing his way through the eerily intangible crowd until he finds himself with the Jedi Temple in his eyeline.

Luke’s not surprised. It's the only reason he would be called here. He winds his way up, until he crosses the threshold of the outer gardens, breathing in. The air is clearer here, as is his mind.  

Sitting some short distance away is a human man, head bowed.

“Father,” Luke says, with absolute certainty.

The figure looks up, smiles faintly, and stands. Anakin Skywalker, as he looked in the spare amount of footage of the Clone Wars. Startlingly young, now, to Luke’s eyes.

“Luke,” Anakin says, gesturing him closer. “Let me look at you.”

Luke smiles wryly. He doesn’t have much sense of what he looks like here but there’s something odd about it all. Anakin young and unmasked is surely stranger for Luke than Luke is to him. But this is his father and they both lived too much of their lives without each other. It’s a simple enough thing, to stand still and let Anakin search his features — for what? Any signs of Luke’s royal mother? Any hint of Shmi’s grace? The boy Anakin himself once was?

Anakin squeezes at Luke’s upper arms once and smiles tightly.

“Father,” Luke begins, unsure how he even intends to finish.

“Walk with me,” Anakin says, stepping away and clasping his hands behind his back. Luke's mind goes a bit dizzy, sees double — he associates that gesture with Obi-Wan.

Luke nods. “Of course.”

“I want to show you the Temple,” Anakin says, nodding towards the entrance of the building.

“I’ve been,” Luke murmurs softly. The first time had been not long after the Coruscanti Liberation Coalition had taken control of the planet. The Alliance leadership would have preferred Luke wait, but he’d been twenty-five and a figurehead alone. He’d needed to know. What he learned was that it was he, not Coruscant, who was unprepared.

“You haven’t seen it like this. You haven't seen it like it was,” Anakin says, face set, a starkness to his cheekbones. “Follow me,” he says, gesturing Luke forward.

“Why bring me here, Father?” Luke asks, reaching out slowly to cup Anakin's elbow. “I know who you were.”

“You knew Darth Vader,” Anakin says, shaking his head and taking slow deliberate steps forward. “No, that's not —” he grimaces. “I was one person the whole time. But you don’t know who I was when I was young. Who _we_ were,” he says, giving an encompassing gesture. “And the stories about the Hero with No Fear, they won’t help you understand. You need to see the Temple. I want you to know where you came from.”

Luke stills the desire to shiver — for decades after that first visit, sudden recollections of the ruins on the Coruscant and the terrible, creeping dread that hung densely over them haunted him at unpredictable moments. In sleep, he would see all of it burning at his feet and he felt only a howling satisfaction. As if all the monsters in his chest had broken free from the confines of his ribcage.

The structures before them, the way they stand now, painstakingly constructed (or reconstructed or remembered) are more familiar to Luke than they should be.

Luke does not say this. He was never given a chance to spare his father from much during their lives, but he can spare him this.

“Thank you,” Luke says, as they both come to a pause just before a large pair of doors. “I always wanted to know what it felt like when it was living.”

Anakin looks at him sideways. “Don’t thank me for this,” he says and pushes through the doors, to the inner receiving rooms.

Luke follows quickly, head darting around, trying to gather as much as he can of what the Temple might have looked like before — or maybe at least at however Anakin remembers it.

They walk in silence for minutes, down a long arched hall.

“It’s the most beautiful place,” Anakin finally says, his expression distant. There’s a troubled crease between his eyebrows. “That’s what I thought as a child. Maybe not as beautiful as Naboo, but I’d never seen an ocean before that. Never seen wildflowers. But here,” Anakin pauses by a trickling stone pond flanked by seating. “The Temple felt deliberate. Earned. Someone had to eke this out here, where nothing grows.”

Luke nods. Anakin and he come from the same desolate planet, where all beauty is either dangerous enough to kill or created, fostered out of defiance.

“I never . . . liked Coruscant,” Luke admits. “But I can see how you could love this place.”

“Oh, the rest of this planet’s pretty take it or leave it,” Anakin glances sideways, smirking slightly. “And it definitely got worse, later. Imperial Center?” he scoffs. “Covered in sycophants, murderers and madmen.”

“Just like home then,” Luke says lightly.

Anakin huffs a short, hard laugh. “They weren’t so different,” he agrees.

Then, they enter the main hall, past the areas where outsiders were free to roam.

Luke glances around, taking in the high ceilings, the history that’s sunk vein-deep into the very structure of the building. All those generations layering it over with meaning — this is what was stripped away; this is what was desecrated.

More than anywhere he has been on this journey, this place feels more haunted than occupied. Elsewhere, there was emptiness, but a certain solidity. Here, the people who move around them are as unsubstantial as dreams under waking light.

So many of the half-there memory people wandering the Temple, avoiding Luke and Anakin deftly like flowing water around a stone, are children. Luke thinks of Obi-Wan saying regrets don’t dissolve in the afterlife.

“Do you ever think,” Luke pauses, searching for the right way to put together the thought. “Do you ever think something would have happened to the Jedi, even if it wasn’t you?”

Anakin keeps walking, his steps remaining measured. Luke keeps pace.

“The Emperor and the Sith before him were planning for a very long time,” Anakin finally says. “I think they would have found a way, even if that way wasn’t me.”

“Why has the Force allowed that? Is it . . . fighting itself?” Luke asks.

Anakin sighs, crosses his arms. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But I think it’s probably not that simple. We constantly underestimate the Force, all of us, in different ways. It’s never lived and it will never die,” he murmurs. “Consequences can’t possibly mean the same thing as they do to us. So how can we expect it to understand?”

“Or it’s always living and always dying,” Luke counters.

The Force has always been an unshakeable constant in Luke’s life, even when he did not want it. The Force has been what Luke ran to, ran away from, has always lived in relation with. He despaired, he raged, he abandoned. And yet it turns out he still can’t stand by and not try to answer doubt with some grasp toward faith.

“I don’t know that always living and always dying would do a lot for one’s perspective either,” Anakin says. “Not exactly the standard experience for most sentient beings.”

Luke looks down at the ground, reluctantly amused. “I’m not sure that’s an argument anyone I read about would’ve taken,” he points out.

“And if that were what you were looking for, I’m not sure I’m the best fit,” Anakin shrugs easily. “If you wanted to debate the moral philosophy of the Force, you should be looking for someone else. I wasn’t so good at that part.” He pauses and dips his head sideways. “Obviously.”

Luke looks down and frowns. He’s pretty sure he wasn’t good at that part either.

“It annoyed a lot of them so much, but I never really cared about the philosophy of it. I felt like there were too many layers. And the Force is immediate,” Anakin continues.

He sounds not unlike Enu, who never really took to sitting meditation, who liked to do cartwheels in the courtyard. Maybe a little like Za’im, who delighted in making her set of toy planets and asteroids hover above her bed, flushing and grinning and promising to go to sleep right away whenever Luke caught her awake past her bedtime.

“Immediate like lifting rocks?” Luke asks, a little wry.

Anakin raises his eyebrows and Luke shakes his head.

“There’s a girl,” he starts to explain.

“I know,” Anakin says.

“She grew up like us. Some nowhere desert planet.” Luke stops and bites his lip. “She didn’t have anyone. And now, there’s so much on her shoulders. It isn’t fair to her.”

Anakin sighs and sits on a bench, staring outward into the open space before them. “I don’t know that fairness is really the priority of the Force. Balance, maybe. Eventually.” He rubs at the hinge of his jaw with two fingers.

Luke watches a youthful Mon Calamari padawan run down the hall part them, translucent and blurry, fading away into the distance.

Here, where the impossible is sewn into the seam of things, Luke knows this about her: She died many years ago, young and afraid. She had a life and then she did not.

Luke knows, with stinging eyes, that he could never — will never truly walk away from the Force. It is too much a part of him and everything he has ever loved. But the children he taught, the children he’d watched over as they grew, died. Those children were killed. There is no balance to that and Luke has found no satisfactory answers to any of his questions.

“When did I lose Ben?” Luke asks, dragging it out of his guts.

Anakin closes his eyes.

“I keep wondering that,” Luke twists his fingers together. “I thought — I knew what it was like to be angry, too. I kept reminding myself of that. But he never _stopped_. It was this constant, devouring thing and I didn't know where it came from. I still don’t! By the end, the little ones had started avoiding him. Like they could tell.”

Anakin breathes in, breathes out. Luke waits.

“Maybe it was fear. Or a need for some kind of control,” Anakin says. “Listening to someone say he could do more, be more, if he tore down the rules you’d made for yourselves. All of those things combined.”

Anakin pauses. A long and loaded silence falls. The half-world around them takes on a kind of translucence, as if all of it is merely the membranous curtain before some greater and stranger truth.

Luke shivers and the world resets.

“Luke, there are any number of reasons,” Anakin says. “The fury, the pain, the power —  It’s always there, in the Force. You know that. But thinking you can control that and not be eaten by it in turn? That's where the Sith come from. The assumption that we’ve conquered the mystery of the Force. But you can't. Try and it will always take more from you than you take from it. And in the end, it takes you back, too.”

“Yes,” Luke agrees, feeling the truth of it.

“It's a choice, Luke,” Anakin says. “You showed me that. With each day, it seems more impossible to turn back. But each day, it's still a choice.”

“Is he never coming back?” Luke asks.

He is remembering Leia's face, the way she looked the first time he saw her. A spark of _recognition_ had swept over him, carrying the absolute knowledge that they had always been meant to know each other. His sister, with heartache behind and heartache ahead, her gaze challenging.

Anakin shakes his head. “I don't know. Maybe he doesn't know.”

“What is all of this _for_ , then?” Luke cries, his hands bunched into fists. “I didn't help then, I can't now?”

“You cannot love him better,” another familiar voice says. Luke looks up, already knowing.

Obi-Wan looks neat now, even younger than before, with his beard and hair trimmed and Jedi robes falling in sharp lines. Anakin smiles. It makes his face softer.

“Hello, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, in a quiet measured voice.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin nods, still faintly smiling.

Obi-Wan looks around for a moment, like he’s taking it all in. “Shall we show Luke the Room of the Thousand Fountains?”

“Why not?” Anakin says. “It’s worth seeing at least once,” he tells Luke.

Luke falls into step with them, down the high ceilinged hallway.

“I’ve had a very long time to think about it,” Obi-Wan says as they walk. “I know I could have done more _,_ when you were struggling. _Should_ have done more.”

Luke feels his stomach turn over. Beside him, Anakin’s head is bowed and the grip his right hand has on his opposite wrist is too tight as they enter the Room of a Thousand Fountains. There are small rock pools scattered throughout the room, housing trickling streams and grand fountains.

They all stand, staring.

“You and I, we can claim our culpability,” Obi-Wan says, close at Luke’s shoulder, his arms drawn together in a straight line, the sleeves of his robes falling together like curtains. “We should. But in the end, as much as we shape the circumstances, the —” Obi-Wan slips into silence and frowning in concentration, “the context in which our students make their decisions, there is always a moment, a place where you can’t follow. Even if you stood beside him in front of the precipice, you would not have seen it exactly as he did. I know. And loving him more wouldn’t have made it clearer. You need to recognize that, or you’ll be swallowed by the circular madness of what could have been.”

“The temptation looks different, for everyone,” Anakin cuts in, working his jaw. “It’s all the same stuff, beneath. Fear. Anger. The anticipation of loss. But your trial wasn’t his. Maybe you didn’t — or maybe you couldn’t prepare him because you anticipated the wrong things. But Luke, when the darkness calls to you, it calls to you uniquely. It was Ben’s to answer.”

_And he did._

Luke’s legs feel too weak for his weight, so he sits on the stone boundary of the nearest pool, his knees going out too quickly.

“Luke,” Obi-Wan asks, sitting beside him. “Are you listening? Do you think you can hear us, this time?”

“I am,” Luke gives a single ironic laugh, “I am _trying_.”

“Good enough for me, anyway,” Anakin declares, taking a seat on Luke’s other side.

Luke stares and stares out in front of him at the fountains, the pools, the clear water. There is no time here, so it might be a moment or it might be an eon before he speaks again. Mindlessly, Luke observes, “This seems like an enormous waste of water.”

Anakin’s mouth twitches into a smile. He catches Obi-Wan’s gaze, looking sideways at him, and then bursts into laughter, throwing his head back. “ _Isn’t_ it?” he asks, between gasping laughs.

Obi-Wan strokes a hand over his beard, wearing a barely suppressed smile. “I believe it’s meant to encourage reflection.”

Anakin rolls his eyes.

Luke can already feel the glimmering end of this visit approaching. He gets up.

“I’ll let you two say your farewells,” Obi-Wan says.

“I’m sorry,” Luke says, quickly. “I was . . . unkind, before. To you.”

Obi-Wan smiles faintly. “Like I told you, Luke, I have loved you for your whole life. It would take far more than some angry words to make me think differently of you.”

Luke swallows against the ache in his throat. When he’d lived, Obi-Wan had been Luke's last great link to his home, his childhood and the security he’d felt then. Luke had known nothing would ever, could ever be the same when he’d told Obi-Wan he would come to Alderaan. But his world had been burned away and Ben Kenobi, for all his mysteries, had at least been familiar and utterly trustworthy though Luke could hardly say why, then.

“I’ve missed you,” Luke admits.

Obi-Wan looks down at the ground for just a moment and then walks up to Luke, reaching out a hand out toward the back of his neck. Luke tips his face down. Obi-Wan presses a firm kiss to Luke’s forehead and says very quietly, “Be well.”

Then he steps back and nods at Anakin, who nods back, his blue eyes carrying a hint of mourning. Obi-Wan turns and walks away and for several long beats, the only sound is of flowing water.

“Landing bay?” Anakin finally asks.

Luke nods.

When they get to the landing bay, there is only one ship waiting, beautiful and silver and sleek.

“That's a Naboo star skiff,” Anakin says, fingers curling softly along his sides.

A clue, Luke supposes, on where he's headed next.

“Father. Couldn’t you . . . come along?” Luke asks, feeling a dull but growing ache beneath his sternum.

Anakin shakes his head. “That ship is for you,” he says, still staring. Then he turns to Luke and smiles faintly. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not . . . trapped here, Luke. And we’ll see each other again.”  

Luke nods, knowing it’s true. Still, he folds his father into a close embrace. Anakin’s arms take a moment to reach back but then they are fierce and firm around Luke’s shoulder and back.

“My son,” Anakin murmurs as he steps away, his hands framing Luke’s shoulders for a moment. Then he lifts them away and says, “You have incredible strength. You and your sister.”

Luke lets that straighten his spine and carry him into the ship, into the atmosphere.

* * *

The journey to Enivah is strange. Everywhere they pass through there’s confusion, disorder. They spot First Order warships on their scanners, cruising by in the far distance, dark and alarming. They finagle their fancy new starfighters through to a harried Republic border checkpoint and submit their their faked credentials. Then, they sit there, stalled within eyesight of a Republic BorderSec starbase, for hours.  

“I apologize for the wait. I’m sure you guessed, but you’ve come at a difficult time,” one young, tired Togruta intake officer says, as her holoimage flickers in front of Poe’s ship control panel.

“Busy?” Poe asks inanely. They aren’t anywhere near the outpost that Rapier Squadron once defended, but the officer’s civilian uniform is still achingly familiar.

“It’s the First Order attacks,” the officer says. “We’re prioritizing refugee entrance. I’m sure you understand.”

“We do,” C’ai’s voice rumbles solemnly over their comms.

The officer nods. Her eyes flick back and forth, reading a screen beyond her image. Finally she announces, “You three are cleared for entrance. But I’d suggest you update your business licenses soon if you’re planning on entering and exiting Republic space with any frequency.” She smiles hollowly. “A little extra security can’t hurt, these days.”

“Thank you,” Jess’s voice comes over their shared comms.

“It is very important work, what you do,” C’ai adds.

The Togruta officer makes a brief humming noise and then says, “Welcome to Republic space.” Then her holoimage disappears.

“Fuck,” Jess says, eloquent as always.

Poe taps his chest pocket, a nervous gesture, feels the raised indentation of L’ulo’s tags (he always keeps them near — it’s been coming up on two years since L’ulo died but sometimes it still keeps Poe awake at night, thinking about how L’ulo had watched his mother’s back through a whole war, how Poe had failed to do the same for L’ulo, when L’ulo had helped raise him).

“Yeah,” he says and pauses. Shakes his head, trying to clear the anxious questions building up in his mind — the Resistance been too cut off from the Republic. Poe hadn’t known to expect to the slumped shoulders and weary eyes of the BorderSec officer, but he should have. “C’mon, let’s get moving.”

The journey isn’t much further and the route is familiar like habit to Poe. Enivah’s not far from Yavin, both of them planted defiantly in the Outer Rim. If they just re-directed a little bit, Poe could be at home in less than a day. He has not seen his father in nearly seven years. He has not lit the candles at his mother’s Remembrance altar in more. But letting himself go down that road will lead nowhere good, so he forces himself to concentrate on his navigation adjustments.

“I always wanted to see Enivah,” Jess says a few hours later, as the three of them pull their ships into a tighter formation, closing in on approaching planet.

“And now you are,” C’ai replies.

“The ziggurats, though,” Jess sighs.

“B’malian City’s not so bad,” Poe says, looking out at the dusty red-brown of the planet surface. “I remember liking it, when my parents used to bring me.” It had been a Dameron family vacation spot once, if only because it was easy enough to reach and his mother missed interplanetary flight. She would let Poe sit in the pilot’s seat while the ship was set to autopilot, so he could pretend he was the captain.

“Not so bad,” Jess repeats wryly. “What an endorsement!”

“Well, we’re not going for the inventive cocktails or the nightlife,” Poe says.

“I am not sure ‘inventive’ is a word I would like associated with intoxicants anyway,” C’ai says.

Jess laughs. “That’s why you’re the responsible one, buddy.”

They land at one of the older city spaceports, where the edges of walls are starting to crumble and the paint on the gates is sun-faded.

The docking reservation attendant squints at them suspiciously with xer eyestalks and names a price so high that Poe can only laugh, sharp and incredulous.

“Didn’t realize it’d become acceptable in B’malian to engage in such obvious price gouging,” Poe says, leaning in over the desk.

“You want security?” xe asks shrilly. “You want security for those pretty, pretty ships? Then you will pay. So many people coming through the Outer Rim looking for safety and so many pirates too. Here, we pay for the best guards!”

“Oh, the _best_ , do you?” Jess asks, crossing her arms. Between the two of them, they manage to talk the attendant down to slightly less absurd rate, but Poe files away the pirate comment for later exploration.  

“We need to get on the holonet,” Poe murmurs as they exit out onto the street. “Get some better news updates.”

Jess nods, but C’ai is frowning slightly at the tiled ground in front of them. Poe mentally goes over the weapons they’ve got on them and flits his eyes over the rooftops of the alley. There are too many mistrustful eyes and too little noise. The B’malian City of Poe’s memories was filled with enthusiastic street food hawkers and eager to please tour guides who claimed to know all the secrets of the ancient city. Now, there are flashing signs on what feels like every corner, reminding people the location of closest aerial attack shelters and to report suspicious behavior to the City Guard.

“I don’t like this,” Jess murmurs.

“Let’s just get to rendezvous point,” Poe says.

C’ai follows, pulling his gaze back from a woman tugging her child closer away from the crowd. “They are preparing for an invasion here,” he assesses.

Poe bites his lip. “Think the place is down this way,” he says. It comes out more forceful than he means it to.

The tavern Kare sent as their meeting site is down a ramshackle alley, where the sandstone buildings are doused in fading carnival colors, splashes of purple and yellow and green clinging stubbornly to the bumpy walls.

Inside, the light is low, the holo fire in the fireplace too orange in the dimness. A server droid floats up almost immediately to greet them.

“We’re meeting friends. Table under Vystin,” Poe says.

“Of course,” the server droid responds. “Please follow me.” They're lead through the sullen crowd to a backroom behind a heavy curtain. A few people huddled together at a booth look up with narrowed eyes and shuffle closer to together. The droid turns turn and gestures up a flight of stairs. “Just this way, please. You’ll find your party in the loft.”

When they enter, General Calrissian turns around to greet them, wearing a deep yellow cape and a grin. He opens his arms, his rings catching the light. “Isn’t this delightful?” he declares. “Let’s see, Lieutenant Threnelli,” he gives C’ai a respectful nod. “Glad to see you. And Lieutenant, no, _Captain_ Pava now, I see,” he takes Jess’s hand and kisses the back of it. “Lovely as always.”

Jess goes faintly pink under her freckles and Poe shifts his jaw around to keep from laughing.

“Ah, and Dameron, isn’t it?” Calrissian rounding on Poe and clasping his upper arm. “You look more like your lovely mother every time I see you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Poe replies, mouth twitching up into an amused smile. It’s hard not to smile around General Calrissian. Back when they’d been a BorderSec Fleet squadron, General Calrissian had come to visit their starbase, a political inspection that for once got everyone excited instead of irritated and tense. After, Kare had declared with a dreamy sigh, that General Calrissian could probably charm a bounty hunter into handing himself over, if he tried.

It takes hours, but they manage to fill General Calrissian, Kare, and Snap in on everything that’s happened since Starkiller.

“A new Jedi,” Calrissian murmurs. “Imagine that.”

“She’s impressive,” Poe says and the thought of everything Ty and Enu and Za’im and all the others never got to be, never got to grow into, stabs at his chest.

“Where’s Skywalker?” Snap asks. “We’ve been hearing rumors he reappeared.”

“He’s — we found him. Or, well, Rey, that girl who found Beebee Eight? She found him,” Poe says. He licks his lips, but can’t find the rest of his words.

“He’s in a coma,” Jess cuts in, quick, surgical. “So. They’re monitoring him.”

“Shit,” Kare says, flinching. “Is it — it’s bad?”

Poe shrugs, digging his fingernails into his palm. “We don’t really know. He’s not waking up but Kalonia couldn’t find any medical reason why,” he admits. “It’s, you know, Jedi stuff.”

Snap rubs a hand over his face. “The General’s okay, though?” he asks.

Poe shrugs, tracing the rim of his mug with a finger. “You know the General.”

Calrissian grins. “She is something, that’s for sure. Alright, I’m sure you’re all very curious about what we’ve been amassing for the Resistance. Blasters, armor, food. Think it and you’ll find I have a guy.”

“So you’re ready to come back with us now,” Poe says, a wave of relief coming over him. A simple mission, a simple reunion. He could use it. They all could. Crossing the border, seeing the Republic can only made it clearer — they needed to bring this fight to the First Order, needed to strike out and give the Republic time to move past grief and pull its defenses together.

Calrissian holds up a finger. “Not _quite_ yet. I have one final appointment tomorrow. An old friend wants to meet. The chief archivist of the Memory Vault here. But after that, yes. Back to the Resistance. To the fight.”  

* * *

There is a woman waiting on the landing platform, the wind playing with her curls.

“Mother,” Luke breathes out. She is young and beautiful and regal, just as striking as Leia. The holos and the paintings and even the stories didn't do her justice. She reminds him, somehow, of the winds across the dunes back home. Stark and indomitable, with the capacity for utter gentleness.

“Luke,” she says, reaching her hands out.

Luke takes them.

“Look at you,” she says smiling tremulously and squeezing Luke's hands. She has a strong, sure grip. “My Luke.”

Growing up, all Luke knew of his mother was her name. Beru had said she was beautiful and brown-haired and an off-worlder. Later, Mon Mothma had said Luke and Leia's mother was brilliant and strategic and idealistic. The kind of person who pushed others to their best by example. Luke had wanted to love her memory but he’d found it hard to even begin to know the woman behind the crown, behind the elaborate senatorial presentation. She was like nothing he’d even known could exist, before he left home.

“You’ve seen Naboo before?” Padmé asks now, threading her arm through Luke’s and walking them back towards the — villa seems like the most suitable word — at the edge of the lake.

“A few times, with Leia,” Luke says, letting himself be lead. “To Theed, though. The Queen — the queen at the time, near the end of the Civil War,” he corrects, because this was all very long ago now, “she and Leia got along quite well.”

Padmé nods.

“But you’ve never been to the Lake District?” she asks. The doors part before them. Inside, everything is airy and light, the wind traveling through and carrying the scent of flowers and ripe fruit.

“No,” Luke says. “I’ve never seen this place before.” It's an odd realization. Everywhere he has been since this started was familiar to him, in one way or another. This is unexpected, unpredicted.

“This is Varykino,” Padmé says, gesturing to the entirety of it — the sprawling house, the grounds, the lake edge.

“Varykino,” Luke repeats back to himself, getting the taste of the name. It is hard to imagine that some part of him came from here, from a place this utterly beautiful. “Did you grow up here?”

Padmé nods. “I left for school in Theed rather young. It’s the way the Naboo do things. It was only when I was older that I started wishing I had spent more time here.” She smiles to herself, a private thing. “I married your father in this house.”

“I didn't know that,” Luke says. He can picture it though.

“There are so many stories I want to tell you,” Padmé says, wistful, sitting on a stone bench and patting the spot beside her.

Luke sits. “You can tell me now,” he offers.

Padmé shakes her head, her plentiful curls shifting. “That isn't what you're here for.”

It seems horribly, hideously unfair that this one opportunity Luke has with his mother will be dictated by fate.

“It could be,” Luke responds, mulish. “Why not?”

Padmé looks over, a warm glint of amusement in her eyes. “I suppose it could be,” she says, squeezing Luke’s hand. “Would you like to hear the story of how your father and I met?”

Luke has a general idea of what happened, but old news stories can only give so much. He nods. “Please.”

Padmé takes a deep breath in, looking out towards the water, and begins, “I hadn't been queen for long.”

His mother is a good storyteller, has a way with words. Leia, he remembers, appreciated that long before she knew her as anything other than her father's old friend, an inspiration.

She's just coming to the resolution of the Battle of Naboo when the air shimmers and unfolds and Rey appears, blinking and stumbling back. “Leia?” she asks, her voice swinging up in bafflement.

“No, don't worry,” Padmé laughs. “She's still among you. She's too stubborn for a little space walk to stop her.”

“But you,” Rey gasps, “you look so much like her.”

Padmé smiles. “I am her mother.” She looks at the ground. “From a certain point of view, anyway.”

Rey frowns. “What does that mean?”

“Rey,” Luke says, “this is Padmé Amidala. Mother, this is Rey. She's sort of a student of mine, I suppose.” He says it lightly, not at all certain it's true.

Rey’s eyes widen and then narrow again, not quite suspicious, but hesitant.

“I haven't seen you recently,” Luke notes, a churning anxiety starting to build in his stomach. “Is everything alright?”

“Ye-es?” Rey says, glancing away and dragging out the word.

“What’s wrong?” Luke asks, spine stiffening.

“Nothing’s wrong that wasn’t wrong before,” Rey says, impatience flitting across her face. “We're busy planning, is all.”

“Planning for —?” Padmé asks.

“You're very . . . _clear_ ,” Rey says, staring at her.

“Direct?” Padmé asks, thoughtfully. “I suppose I have been accused of that a few times. Diplomacy does require it sometimes, despite what people will tell you.”

“No, I just — I can see you so well,” Rey says, puzzled. “Why is that?”

Padmé smiles, inscrutable as her pale-faced portraits. “Perhaps that's a question for Luke.”

Rey turns to him, but Luke doesn't know the answer. Is he closer or further away from life than he was before? Has he wanted this meeting more than the others?

“Maybe you’re getting better at this,” Luke offers. “I couldn't see Obi-Wan at all the first time he visited after his death.”

Rey brightens for a second and then shakes her head, buns swaying. “It's not the same! You're not dead!”

“So people keep reminding me,” Luke agrees.

Padmé smiles.

“Are you really their mother?” Rey asks, eyeing her.

“I am,” Padmé replies.

Rey frowns, shifting around to scratch at her left ankle with the heel of her foot. “You _miss_ them,” she mumbles, with a swift glance towards and away from Padmé, trying and failing to hide the woundedness behind the words.

Luke wants to flinch back, because whatever else he has been since then, he was a loved child. But Rey was alone, for years, and then Luke turned his back, too. Some long-buried instinct makes him rise to his feet.

“Sometimes the people who care aren't who we hope,” Luke says, reaching slowly for Rey's elbow and squeezing. He hadn't wanted to know her, when she’d shown up, hadn't wanted the reminder of how old his students should have been. It had been easier, perhaps, to turn away when he had cut half of himself off. “But I know you have people waiting for you. People who care very much.”

Padmé stands now, too, a soft, kind smile on her face. “Leia thinks very highly of you. And that brave young man of yours does too, you know.”

Rey’s eyes go wide. “What? How do you know about —?” Then she cuts herself off. She might be starting to blush.

Luke raises his eyebrows slightly.

Rey plants her hands on her hips and says, “Leia would like to know if you think you'll wake up soon.”

“She could ask me herself,” Luke points out.

“She said you would say that and she said to tell you she's very busy running the Resistance and doesn't have time to chat,” Rey replies, a little sing-song like she memorized this bit.

“Right,” Luke says, dry.

“Well?” Rey prods.

Luke licks his lips. “Soon,” he manages to murmurs. “I hope soon.”

Rey nods. “I think so, too,” she says, looking around. Then she frowns, starts in on a curse and disappears.

“I’m glad I got to meet her,” Padmé says, squeezing Luke's arm.

“So am I,” Luke says, finding it's the truth. They settle back on the bench and Luke asks, “Who were you talking about with Rey?”

He does have his suspicions — despite his best attempts, Rey had proven all too eager to share the story of how she had ended up on his island — but Luke hadn't been interested in asking too many questions about the friends she’d made along the way.

Padmé tips her face down to laugh, curls shaking around her shoulders. “I’m sure you’ll have a chance to find out yourself,” she says. “Besides,” she says, eyes lighting up dangerously, the same gleam Leia got before coming up with an escape plan that somehow, unerringly, involved garbage. “I’d rather talk about that brave young man of _yours_.”

Luke cough-chokes. “I’m sorry?”

“I am your mother. I’m interested!” Padmé says.

“You . . . know about Poe?” Luke asks, slowly, trying to translate that concept for himself. He’d wondered, sometimes, what Owen and Beru might have thought of Poe, but even that had been distant, wistful, entirely hypothetical.

“A bit. But I would rather hear about him from you!” Padmé says.

“I haven’t,” Luke rubs a hand over his neck, swallows. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

Padmé reaches for his hand and squeezes. “You’ll see him again,” she says like a promise.

“I hope so,” Luke whispers.

“You will,” Padmé repeats, conviction in her voice.

Luke breathes against the ache in his throat, even and deliberate, letting the birdsong fill the quiet between them. But eventually, his brain reminds him of how much he still wants to know, that he may never have the chance to ask again so long as his body still breathes.

“Do you think — Am I . . . am I anything like you?” Luke asks.

He’s studied holos of her before, read what survives of her political writings, seen her eyes in Leia’s. But he’s never known how to find her in himself.

“I don’t look much like you. I — ” Luke shrugs. He wants to say that she was a mystery to him, some offworlder element that must have shaped him but in ways he could never identify. But that would be cruel. He has lost children, too.

Padmé stares out at the water, her eyebrows knit.

“I’m sorry,” Luke starts.

“Don’t be,” Padmé says. “It’s not an easy question to answer is it?” she murmurs. “But I’d like to think so. I would like to believe that I had something to do with your faith.”

“I don’t know that I’ve been very faithful, the last several years,” Luke says.

“And yet you’re here,” Padmé says, showing the same fierce kindness Leia always has. “So yes, I like to think you get some of that from me. And I suppose you got your height from me, too,” she smiles, reaching out to tuck some hair behind Luke’s ear.

Luke ducks his head, unable to keep down a surprised laugh, undoing his mother’s work in the process. “Seems like it,” he agrees.

Padmé stand and turns toward the water, thoughtful. She leans forward, resting her forearms on the stone ledge of the balcony. Luke joins her, looking out across the water, the herons swooping low.

“I planned on teaching you to swim, here,” Padmé says, a fleeting hint of a smile dancing like wind across her face. “I had so many plans, for the two of you.”  

“They taught me to swim, in the Rebellion,” Luke offers. It isn’t the same, but he knows, because of Leia, because of Mon Mothma, that the Alliance was Padmé’s child, too.

She reaches out now, and squeezes his arm. “Good,” she says. “I’m glad.”

Luke doesn’t want to leave yet, but he can feel the calling in his chest.

“There's still one more place I have to go,” Luke says. If his father could bring him back into the temple on Coruscant, then Luke has to have the fortitude to walk back into his own burning memories.

Padmé nods and straightens up to escort him back to the landing pad. “This was my ship when I served in the Senate,” she says, a distant look in her eyes as she appraises the star skiff.

“Father recognized it,” Luke says.

Padmé smiles again. Then she reaches out and draws Luke close. “My darling son,” she whispers, hands cupping Luke's face. Luke bends to let her kiss his forehead. “Tell your sister how proud I am of you both,” she says, a parting command.

“Yes, Mother, I will,” Luke promises.

* * *

As these things go, the Enivah Memory Vault isn’t especially massive. Poe’s seen the Republic Archives on Hosnian Prime, which required buildings upon buildings to contain all the data disks. It's beautiful though, lightly glowing glass mosaics of Enivah’s long history climbing up the walls in tall, striking panes.

Calrissian strides in the main entrance, the sound of his boots on the swirling blue-green floor echoing upward.

Poe scans the main reading area in front of them — there are long tables down the center and private corrals along the sides. A few ragged people are scattered around, dozing, but beyond that, it’s eerily empty. There’s certainly movement. But it’s of a hurried and oddly circumspect nature, people in the long gowns of archivists walking in hurried clumps, directing sealed carts around.

“I have an appointment with Erida Delios,” Calrissian says in a low tone to the human woman who’s the only person behind the main desk.

She looks up from her console, flinching back in her seat, sending her dark curls bouncing. “I’m sorry?” she asks.

“I’m here to see Erida Delios, the Chief Archivist,” Calrissian responds.

“You have . . . an appointment,” repeats the human woman slowly.

“Yes,” Calrissian agrees with a smile.

“Yes. Right. Yes,” the woman says, eyes going wide, hand fluttering around her collar bone. “Just a moment.” She scurries back into the office behind her.

Poe shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a prickling hyperawareness starting to bloom up the back of his neck.

C’ai clears his throat, which makes the woman at the desk look up and the archivists scurrying around with their carts glance over and then dart back to their work, extra speed in their echoing steps. _Evacuation_ , C’ai taps out in code, fingers to his chest.

Kare nods, frowning, and Jess bites her lip.

Something is not going as it was meant to, Poe thinks. Memory Vaults were built not to require data evacuations. Something about redundancy, Poe remembers that from school.

Just then, a droid archivist emerges from the back office, walking with deliberate speed. She’s tall and long-armed, hints of wiring exposed at the elbow. “General,” she says to Calrissian, “it’s good to see you alive.”

Calrissian smiles up at the droid, slightly lopsided, and says, “I remember you! Vee Five Jay Cee, best data systems administrator this side of the Core. Still watching out for Erida, huh?”

“I find the archives to be a worthy organizational challenge,” Vee Five says.

Poe studies her, wondering. There are stories of the droid hackers that had run with the Rebellion.

“Please. Follow me. I will escort you to the Chief Archivist’s office.”

Lando waves a cheerful good-bye to the human archivist. Then they all follow behind Vee Five, as she scans them through to a back area and then leads them down a hall.

“The third door down,” Vee Five says. “And, General? It is good to see you.”

“Likewise, Vee,” Calrissian responds. “It’s good to know Erida still has someone like you around. Times like these, we could all use a friend.”

Vee Five nods once and walks away. Lando looks contemplatively after her, but then Kare coughs pointedly. Lando turns back and knocks on the Chief Archivist’s office door.

“Enter,” an imperious voice from within declares.

Calrissian smiles over his shoulder. “You’ll love her,” he promises, as the door slides open.

“Oh, good, you _are_ alive,” the Chief Archivist says, leaning in to peer at them from across her massive, cluttered desk, lekku swinging slightly. She’s a short, deep blue Twi’lek woman, younger than Poe expected, and wearing the same crisp green archivist's robes as the rest of the staff.

“I have a talent for it,” Calrissian grins, throwing his arms out.

“Mm, quite,” Erida says, making a face somewhere between a grimace and a chagrined smile. “So. Listen. I need you to smuggle my archive.”

Poe blinks. If this is a euphemism, he really, really does not want to know.

Erida dips her head sideways, considering and amends, “Part of the archive. Not the whole thing.”

“Smuggle your archive . . . where?” Calrissian asks, with narrowed eyes. “What’s your timeline?”

“Naboo, and as soon as possible,” Erida responds efficiently. “The fighting is getting too close for comfort. I already have a storage agreement with the Queen of Naboo. I just need a courier. And you’ll be paid. Six thousand credits upfront, plus copies of any data useful to,” she gestures at all of them, “your friends, plus another nine thousand credits from the Queen of Naboo when she’s confirmed successful transfer. What do you think?”  

Poe breaks in while he can to ask, “But why do you have to smuggle any of it anywhere?”

“Enivah’s close to the border and likely to be in the first wave of invasions,” Erida says plainly. “I’m not taking any chances. It's my job to protect the data and I will.”

“But there are backups!” Jess says, a line of anxiety etched across her forehead. “Right? I mean, not the backups in the Republic Archives on Hosnian Prime. I know everything from all the Memory Vaults was there, and — ”  Jess flinches and then sets her teeth. “And those are gone, now, yeah. But there are other backups too, right? I mean, that was the point! Nothing lost.”

Jess, Poe reflects, definitely paid closer attention in school than Poe did.

“There are other backups, yes, but they were never meant to be complete,” Erida says, giving Jess an acknowledging nod. “For each planet, only data deemed vital to the Republic and post-planetary survival was given a secondary backup on an additional planet after Hosnian Prime.”

“It was an infrastructural compromise, to get the project up and running. But it leaves too much out!” Erida shakes her head. “A bunch of ignorant politicians and staid, elite scholars got to decide what counted as vital for Enivah, fifteen years ago. They wanted to preserve our history, but only the history that mattered to them. I won't allow it. Here, we remember even those things people would rather forget.”

She's wild-eyed by the end of the speech, clenching a fist on her desk. Poe has the urge to stand up straighter, in the presence of that.

Erida takes a deep breath in, gets on her feet, and looks at Calrissian. “I need to make this happen and I want you to be the one to do it. I trust you.”

( _This will be your burden and your honor_ , Commander Relan-Deyi had told Poe's cadet class upon their graduation, newly pinned rank insignias on their chests. _People across the Republic will trust you and rely upon you to confront danger, violence, and war on their behalf. They will trust you with their lives and their legacies and you must rise to the challenge._ Poe had believed — still believes — that it was this promise he was fulfilling when he left for the Resistance. But now, here, which is the duty before him? What does it mean to defend the Republic?)  
  
Lando sighs, expression going serious. “I want to help, Erida, I really do. But it's already past time we were back with our people. The war might be coming here, but we’ve been fighting it for years. The First Order has done its worst to us, too. I just don’t think we have time for a diversion like this.”  
  
Poe worries a sliver of his lower lip between his teeth, trying to keep his unease condensed. He remembers being dragged as a reluctant teenager to the opening of the Yavin Memory Vault, the sun hot overhead while he watched his abuelo and the other elders douse the stones in holy river water and anoint the doors with flowers. For his parents, it had been one promise fulfilled, another made.  
  
“What will you be defending if the First Order destroys what defines us?” Erida asks, her voice going hard. “I’m not asking you about taking some side trip. This is about survival, too. We won't know ourselves if we let the records of where we went wrong fall away.” She swallows. “I know we — the Republic was wrong about the First Order. But now we all have our backs up against the wall together. Please, Lando. You're the best hope I have.”

Poe almost shivers, hearing the echoes of that famous story — Leia’s message, which reshaped the war and the galaxy. His belief has always been ambivalent. He has never been like his abuelo, who read signs in the leaves and the wind. But this feels like fate whispering in his ear.

Calrissian take a deep breath in and lets it out. “I’m going to need a moment with my team, to discuss.”  
  
“Please,” Erida says, gesturing expansively. “I’ll get myself a cup of tea. I’ll expect an answer on my return.” She glides out, robes fluttering like a dancer's cape.  
  
“Well?” Calrissian asks them, eyebrows raised.

Jess turns and bursts out immediately, “We have to help her! We have to. She’s right. There are things in those Memory Vaults we can’t lose.” She bites her lip and adds in a rush, “My grandmother's stories are in the Memory Vault on Oiyata. They came to record in my ancestor village. She was,” Jess swallows. “She was so proud of that. I can't — we can't just turn our backs on this.”

Poe aches for her, with her, but it’s Kare who reaches out first, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Jess,” she says, softly, “I hear you. But you haven’t seen what Snap and I have seen here. The Republic isn’t ready for this fight. We’re the vanguard and we need to be ready. We have to go back.”

Poe sends out out a silent prayer to his abuelo’s gods and goddesses, hoping that he’s listened correctly. Then he clears his throat and makes the call.

“Not all of us,” he says, turning to address Calrissian. “General, the Resistance badly needs those supplies you’ve got, but it can spare two pilots for a few more weeks. Jess and I will take the data to Naboo.”

* * *

Luke steps out of his mother's ship onto tall, springy grass, that deep greenness that makes everything seem closer and more alive. The air here smells like freshly tilled dirt and cooking smoke and laundry soap.

It brings Luke to his knees. He gasps for breath.

“Luke!” he hears a shriek, before a small body barrels into him. “You're _finally_ here!” Za’im’s arms wrap tightly around his shoulders.

“Hi, little one,” Luke says, breathing in the soap smell clinging to her montrals. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

Za’im squirms and pulls back (heartachingly soon — she had been growing up so quickly, taller every time Luke turned around) and shakes her head. “ _You_ were waiting,” she says.

Luke feels that prickling along his spine that he’d get back home, when he was young, when he had some unnameable sense that something was coming, that the winds would pick up soon, hurl themselves against the living. But before he can ask, there they are, walking down the dirt road from the temple.

“Hi, Luke,” Ty says, walking over with Enu, their joined hands swinging.

Enu grins. “You need a haircut!”

“Oh?” Luke asks dryly, getting up and dusting off the familiar red-brown dirt from his knees. “That’s what you’d like to share?”

Enu nods, widening her eyes to look extra earnest.

“She just wants to _help you improve_ ,” Sarni says, deepening her voice to imitate the tone of practiced patience Luke and Rona used while teaching. She was a gifted mimic — Luke had forgotten how uncanny it could be.

“I don’t remember trying to give you all style advice,” Luke says, and Sarni laughs, her head tentacles swinging.

“Which was better for everyone,” Sarni grins.

“I _do_ remember teaching you to mind your manners,” Ekta says, walking over side-by-side with Rona, her arms folded.

Sarni tugs on the ends of two of her head tentacles, a picture of contrition except for the mischief in her dark eyes.

“Look at all of you,” Luke whispers. He can see, in the distance, all the rest standing in the road, or leant up against the compound fence, waving.

Ekta smiles, a small but generous thing that wrinkles her cheek tattoos. “Shall we?” she nods up the path.

Za’im tugs at his hand. “Yes! You have to come see the tree,” she demands.

“That’s here, too?” Luke asks.

(When Rona, Ekta, and he had finally decided on Thaela as the right location, Luke had waffled about planting the Force tree in the courtyard. It had felt oddly final — they only had the one.

Rona had shrugged, but Ekta had said, “Look, none of us have a lot of experience with permanence, but sometimes you just have to make it.”

More than a decade later, when the new SystemSec team lead Lieutenant Poe Dameron had walked into the courtyard, a grin had lit up his face. Immediately, he’d pointed and exclaimed, “Hey! That’s my tree’s sister!” to the two young officers with him, before remembering the formal introductions he was meant to conduct. Luke had wanted to laugh but managed, mostly, to stop himself and to nod along seriously as Poe straightened his shoulders and rattled off the Fleet’s canned SystemSec introductory speech.)

Za’im looks up at him and asks, “Where else would it be?”

Ben had burned the whole compound, on his way out. With flames climbing its branches, the tree had looked like a beacon of destruction, flickering with the echoes of death.

“I don’t know,” Luke says. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”

“It’s a Force tree!” Za’im says, trotting them along up the road. “Of course it’s here!”

“Of course,” Luke echoes, sharing a glance with Rona.

When they get to the compound, he’s crowded in by all of them, his students, with their warm, wonderful, familiar presences, brushing over him like water in a drought.

Their chatter carries him into the kitchen, airy and well-used, and to the large wooden dining table where they always gathered.

They tell him stories, stories he’s heard before but is too glad to hear again. Their stories. Ky-Elin rumbles through the tale of how xe had left xer beloved home planet, to bring xerself and xer child here, to learn, to become more who xe both were. Ty speaks of first walking up the dirt road to the temple, hand in hand with his mother, his mother who could feel in her spine that the gods had blessed her little boy with something that should be honed. Ekta tells of falling in love with Rona, with the mischief that lay hidden beneath her core of capable strength, and of building their marriage over food deliveries and scraped knees and harvest work schedules.

“Do you remember?” they ask. _This was a place of joy; this was a place where we learned; this was a place of love. This was where we loved_.

“Yes,” Luke says. “Yes,” he promises.

Finally, finally, Rona taps Luke on the shoulder and says, “Alright, we’re going for a walk.”

This, like everything else, is familiar, aching. They’d walk through the orchards together, talking about the students, about what supplies they needed from town, about some tricky bit of philosophy they were grappling with. They do that now, heading down the same route they always did, into the shade of the fruiting trees.

“Are you ready, do you think?” Rona asks, baldly. “To go back?”

Luke looks at the ground, then raises his gaze again to her face. “I don’t want to do this without you,” he admits. “Without all of you.”

“Luke,” Rona says, putting her hands on his shoulders, “with love, it’s time to get over yourself.”

Luke crosses his arms. “Thanks,” he says, spine stiffening.

“Alright, don’t overreact,” Rona says, gripping his elbow. “All I’m saying is there’s a nineteen year old girl with the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders and she’s asking you for help. You have to say yes. Maybe it’s not fair, but you have to.”

Luke swallows. “I know.” Because he does — how many years did he long for someone, anyone, to show him the route, to give him any sign posts for how to proceed? Rona finding him, planting her feet into the ground and saying she would go with him had felt like finally coming up for air.

“It’s just — how many wars is enough?” Luke asks.

Rona looks at the ground. “All things that come into being are impermanent,” she quotes back to him, eyes sad and tired. “Balance doesn’t just happen, Luke. It has to be built and rebuilt and rebuilt. We know that.”

“I spoke to my father,” Luke says, slowly. “He thinks that maybe we expect the wrong things from the Force. That it’s so much larger than us that it can’t always understand.”

Rona stares ahead of her for a long time and shakes her head. “I think your father’s wrong,” she finally says.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, I guess,” Luke says,

“Yeah, maybe the Force is not on the same scale as us, maybe it doesn’t understand what it is to be finite, but to say that we can’t ex— it doesn’t _cause_ our suffering,” Rona says.

“It doesn’t take it away, either,” Luke counters, anger and the ache of tears caught in his throat.

“We cause suffering and we compose the alleviation of suffering. That’s being alive,” Rona says, plainly. “You know that.”

“I miss you,” Luke says. He’s needed her counsel for so long. Amidst all the confusion of teaching themselves the old ways and building their own new ways, Rona had always had a knack for creating clarity. She might have called it a survival mechanism, but Luke had recognized it as a gift.

Rona sighs deeply and puts a hand on Luke’s shoulder, squeezes. “We miss you, too, Luke,” she says. “But all you have to do is reach out and you can find us in the Force. Stop cutting yourself off because you think it’ll be less painful.”

“I didn’t know how to hold all the pain and still be alive,” Luke confesses in a whisper.   

“I know,” Rona says, low over the hum of insects. “I know. But you _are_ alive and you’re needed. We’ll be here. But right now, there’s still more for you to do.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees. He’s known all this. Somewhere, in some way, within himself, he’s known. Hearing Rona say it makes it clear though. They stay there, watching the swaying branches. The air tastes like ripening fruit, not quite sweet. It had been as much of a surprise that they could keep an orchard running as it was that people trusted them to teach their children. Luke misses this land, the verdancy of it, the promise.

Then, beneath the rustle of the leaves and the bird calls, come shuffling footsteps.

“Hi,” Za’im says, announcing herself.

“Hi,” Luke says, turning and immediately finding himself smiling, warm with affection. Za’im had been their youngest, small and orphaned and special from the moment he’d seen her big eyes curiously peeking out from behind a chair, unable to hide her little toddler gasp of awe at Luke levitating toys for the children gathered in the creche.

Za’im looks at Rona and asks, “Can it be my turn now?”

Rona raises her eyebrows slightly and waits.

“Can it be my turn now, _please_?” Za’im asks.

“He’s all yours,” Rona agrees. She claps Luke on the shoulder once more and says over her shoulder, “Come find us again, when you’re done,” as she walks away.

“Let’s go look at the Husa pear trees!” Za’im declares.

Luke laughs — they’d shared a love of the fruit, Za’im dragging him out early each morning during the season to check if they were ripe enough to pick yet, squirming with eager impatience. “Yeah,” he says, “let’s do that.”

The pear trees are green now, past their flowering white, heavy with their bounty.

“Let’s pick them,” Za’im declares, pointing at a branch.

Luke ponders this. “Can we eat them, you think?” he asks.  

“Yeah,” Za’im says with her easy child-confidence. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Luke echoes thoughtfully.

They sit in the dirt, eating their pears and Za’im chatters, asking about the caretakers at the First Temple, reminding Luke about moments here he half-remembers, from ordinary days (“Do you remember?”), speculating about what makes pears so tasty.

Then, suddenly she sits up very straight, gets to her feet, and dusts herself off.

“What is it?” Luke asks, heaving himself up.

“Someone’s coming,” Za’im announces.

The air shimmers and folds around itself and then Rey is standing in front of them, blinking and looking around, a little shocked, like she’s been abruptly woken.

Luke feels dizzy, uncertain of his feet from the juxtaposition of her here.

“Is this —” Rey begins to ask, slow and hesitant.

“Yes,” Luke says.

“ _Oh_ ,” Rey says, tightening her jaw against the wave of grief Luke cannot keep within himself. “Of course. I — I recognize it.”

 _From Ben’s memories or from Luke’s?_ Luke wonders.

“Hello,” Za’im says, planting herself in the middle of them. “Are you Rey?”

Rey nearly jumps back in surprise. “Yes. I am,” she agrees. “And you are?”

“I’m Za’im,” responds Za’im, as if this should explain everything.

“Alright,” Rey says uncertainly, glancing up at Luke, who can only shrug.

Za’im leans in to peer up at Rey. “Do you like to meditate?” she asks.

“Um,” Rey asks. “I don’t know. I guess, I haven’t done it a lot?”

Za’im hums and nods thoughtfully. “Do you like climbing trees?” she asks.

“What’s with the interrogation, little one?” Luke cuts in, tugging gently at Za’im’s shoulder.

“It’s _important_ ,” Za’im looks up at him and promises.

“It’s — um, it’s okay,” Rey says slowly. She turns back to Za’im and answers, “I’ve never climbed a tree, actually. There weren’t any, really, where I’m from.”

“I’m sorry,” Za’im says solemnly.

“Hey,” Luke says, suppressing a laugh. “Some of us are from deserts and that’s okay, too. There are a lot of different kinds of places in the galaxy, same way there are lots of different people. You remember learning about that.”

“I’m not sorry she’s from a desert! I’m sorry she didn’t have a tree,” Za’im protests. She turns back to Rey and asks, “Do you like trees? Even if you didn’t have one?”

“I do,” Rey says thoughtfully. “I think I would like to have a tree.”

Za’im nods, evidently satisfied. She clasps her hands together, one over the other in front of her torso and gives a formal dip of her head, a perfect Thaela respectful adieu to an honored guest. “Thank you for your visit,” she says.

Rey’s forehead wrinkles. “How did you —?” And then she’s gone.

“What was that about?” Luke asks, bemused.

Za’im purses her lips and says, “Bend down. Please.”

“Since you said please,” Luke agrees.

“Just because you love me, doesn't mean you can't love her,” Za’im leans in and says. Her wide, wide green eyes are so close.

Luke’s bent knees buckle and hit the soft dirt. “Little one,” he starts, looking up at her face, her rounded cheeks and stubborn chin. He swallows, throat aching.

Za’im pokes him in the shoulder. “See, I knew you were worried,” she says, voice lilting up with just a hint of pride, like she’s done well on her telepathy exercises.

“Oh, I’m that easy to figure out, huh?” Luke says, trying for a smile.

“Yes,” Za’im agrees, laughing and nodding. “Come on, let’s go back in!”

Luke swallows. He knows — he _knows_ he has to go. Za’im’s already starting to walk away, back up to the compound.

She turns around, hands on her hips, waiting. “Coming?” she asks.

“I don’t know if I can, little one,” Luke says, bruised by his own hesitance.

“It’s okay!” Za’im says, beckoning. “I was _promised_ you wouldn’t have to go right away.”

“Yeah?” Luke asks, feeling the wind across his neck, knowing with absolute certainty that if he turned around now, he would be in the presence of the Force, that if he reached into towards his blood, he would find it there, too.

Za’im nods and holds out her hand. Luke takes it.


	4. Chapter 4

. . . to each his own / recollections, her reclamations, their / restorations . . .

\- Natasha Trethewey, “Liturgy (For the Mississippi Gulf Coast),” _Monument: Poems, New and Selected_ , 119.

* * *

Poe and Jess arrive on Naboo in the middle of the night, Theed’s buildings and waterways illuminated by twinkling lamps. It looks like something out of a storybook.  

“So this is Naboo,” Jess murmurs as they draw in.

“Pretty innocuous looking considering . . . everything,” Poe notes. He’s never been before either, though he knows his mother came, during the last war. And there were Naboo pilots throughout the Fleet, people who talked about their homeplanet with poetic pride and ferocious shame. The birthplace of the Emperor and the birthplace of the Rebellion’s first leader; a planet of contradictions.

“Hm,” Jess says shortly. “We’ll see.”

“I don’t think this sixteen-year old queen with a savior complex has some nefarious scheme in mind for us,” Poe says, because that’s Jess’s skeptical tone.

“Not nefarious. Probably,” Jess replies. “But she’s definitely got a _scheme_. Monarchs always do,” she says, shaking her head and starting landing procedures.

They’re met by the captain of the Royal Guard and a small contingent of handmaidens. Standing at Poe's side, Jess frowns slightly. All the girls look oddly alike, with their matching hooded outfits and demurely cast down eyes.

“Welcome to Naboo, Commander Dameron, Captain Pava. I’m Captain DeMar and these are the queen’s handmaidens. Her majesty will receive you tomorrow morning after you’ve rested,” the captain says. Then he bows his head slightly. “We are honored to have you.”

“And grateful for your assistance,” the middle handmaiden adds, still looking down.

“Thank you,” Poe answers. “We have the data cases in storage. Chief Archivist Delios said you had specialists on hand?”

The handmaiden on the right gestures to some armed guards by the palace entrance. Suddenly, a set of doors slide open and there are harried looking scholars spilling out onto the landing bay, anxiously inquiring about their ships’ storage specifications.

Once Jess and Poe have given them enough information, Captain DeMar suggests, “Let us get you out of the damp. I believe the archivists can best handle matters from here.”

“Please, follow us,” the handmaiden closest to Poe says, gesturing toward the palace.

As they troop down some grand hallway, one of the handmaidens glances at the other walking beside her, almost without moving her head at all. Then she says to Poe, “We understand you are Shara Bey’s son.”

“Yes,” Poe agrees, wondering a little uneasily if they all speak in the plural. “That’s me.”

The handmaiden jabs her chin sideways at her compatriots, a smug, bird-like gesture. Jess raises her eyebrows.

“Sosha Soruna sends her regards. She is sorry she is unable to greet her dear friend’s son,” says the handmaiden walking beside Jess.

Poe's mother had gotten a package from Naboo every winter. One for each year she was home from the war. It would appear with the winter fog, filled with fruits and delicacies from the former queen’s estate. It had been an enjoyable novelty, but Poe had never particularly thought of his mother as a friend of the queen. She was his mother and she was brave and the rest was incidental.

The final handmaiden, who has been leading the way, clicks her tongue briefly and says, “The Queen requested Soruna serve as our Acting Senator. Duty required her to be on Chandrila, with the Emergency Government.”

“Well. More than understandable,” Poe says, fumbling for something polite, when all he really wants is actual information, about what the Republic is up to, about what the Queen wants.

But before Jess or he can ask any questions, they’re deposited in front of their lodgings for the night.

“Feels like we ought to be wearing dress uniforms,” Jess mutters to Poe the next morning, as they stand before the throne room.

Poe opens his mouth but then the guards beside them bow and throw open the doors. Seated at the center of the room, guarded on both sides by her eerie handmaidens, is a girl. Her round face is painted white, tiny glittering crystals descending in tear tracks from the far corners of her dark eyes. Her lower lip is bisected by a brilliant brown-red that trails down to the soft point of her chin, like an open wound. Her hair is hidden by an elaborate silvery headscarf that catches the light and spills over her shoulders and embroidered purple robe.  

“Welcome,” Queen Zainabya says, gesturing them both forward. Her voice carries with greater volume and clarity than Poe would have expected. “Naboo thanks you for your assistance.”

Poe has given Leia his fealty for years, but he’s never really thought about her as royalty. Now, standing before a queen who sits on the same throne Leia’s biological mother once ruled from, he sees the echoes. Leia and this girl-queen both carry themselves as if command is in their bone marrow

“The Resistance was formed to preserve the Republic and democracy from the threat of the First Order,” Poe responds.

“And what is the Republic if not its history?” Jess finishes.

The Queen smiles at that, more with her eyes than her mouth. “Indeed. We must not forget and we must resist the temptation to mis-remember. We are stronger when we acknowledge the unvarnished truth. Isn’t so?”

Poe licks his lips, unease swimming in his throat. Beside him, Jess stands stiffly as if at a parade inspection.

“Your majesty?” Poe asks. ( _Get them to talk; don’t give your position away_ , General Calrissian had advised the students in Poe’s Advanced Command Tactics class once, a lifetime ago.)

“Here on Naboo, we have long admired Leia Organa,” the Queen says, almost conversational. “She has a gift of foresight. And great strength of will.”

“Yes, your majesty, she certainly does,” Poe agrees.

“We admire her as well,” Jess says.

“So you must, to have followed her so far and for so long,” Queen Zainabya responds. She studies them, gaze scrutinizing and expression inscrutable. Then she rises from the throne. She’s shorter than her voice made her seem.

“Commander, Captain, will you walk with me? You have not yet had the chance to see our grounds,” she says. “Everyone who visits the palace must see our gardens at least once.”

“Your majesty is generous,” Poe agrees.

As they exit the throne room with the queen, two handmaidens follow, dropping back to a polite distance. As they enter the gardens (lush, filled with blooming flowers and songbirds and ponds with brilliant floating lotuses) the only hint the handmaiden are still there is the glimpses of orange in Poe’s peripheral vision and the quiet shuffle of their steps.

“This is beautiful,” Jess says. “I’ve never seen so many varieties of lotus before.”

“Yes,” Zainabya agrees, eyes lighting up in what Poe thinks is genuine excitement. “It’s a horticultural jewel. The regulation of the water and the temperature required to maintain so many species in one place is incredibly complex.”

“Do you enjoy gardening?” Poe inquires.

“I do,” the Queen says, surveying the grounds. “A pet passion, I suppose.” She glances down and shakes her head minutely. “But these days, I walk here to remind myself that it still is. And that it _must_ be saved.” Abruptly, she stops in the middle of the winding path and turns to face them both. “Naboo cannot be destroyed. Nor can any more Republic planets. It cannot be allowed.”  

“Starkiller Base was destroyed,” Poe says.

“Which I thank the gods for every day,” Queen Zainabya responds. “But I believe we all know that is not enough.”

Jess glances over at Poe, her speculative face on. The Queen of Naboo has access to resources, financial and material, that the Resistance could use.

“I think,” Zainabya says, “that we were caught unawares. I will not pretend we had no warning about the First Order. Clearly the existence of the Resistance proves that there were voices raising the alarm. But planetary-scale destruction?” she shakes her head. “We did not believe it would happen. Not twice in one lifetime. But it has come to pass. It must never happen again.”

Poe looks down at the queen, struck with a dizzy sense of unreality. He is speaking to a sixteen year old girl, who was born long after the destruction of Alderaan, who nevertheless speaks with the weight of history in her throat.

“So. I have a proposal for you,” Queen Zainabya says. “A proposal for the Resistance at large. But my hope is that you two will serve as the beginning.”

“The beginning of what, exactly?” Poe asks. “Your majesty.”

Zainabya nods at him. Her hands are folded behind her back, as if she is the one standing at parade rest.

“Understand that I speak on behalf of the Emergency Government of the New Republic when I say this. Our proposal is a simple one,” she says. “Come home.”

Poe can’t speak.

“Home — like. Like come back to the Republic?” Jess asks for them both, stumbling over the concept.

“Yes,” Queen Zainabya agrees, eyes widening earnestly. “Come back. Rejoin the Republic. Let us stand side-by-side once again.”

Poe’s mind is racing but he goes with the most important thing first. “The two of us can’t make that decision on behalf of the Resistance,” he says.

“I understand,” Queen Zainabya says. “Speak with General Organa and your leaders. Make your decisions. But the two of you, individually, are already here. Why not stay and become the first step in the reintegration of the Resistance and the Republic?”

Jess grabs out for Poe’s elbow, squeezing.

The Queen continues, “I understand that the Resistance must need you both. You’ve suffered devastating losses. But so has the Republic. And we badly need the Resistance _here_. With us. Years ago, the Resistance said we were burying our heads in the sand and perhaps we were,” she says. “But now — now we all see the threat before us. Now we are all wounded. It would do us all good to meet in the sunlight. Please, consider it.”

 _Home_ , Poe repeats to himself silently. _T_ _his_ is the longing that has been living in him for years. This is the longing that cries out now, wearing his father’s face and his mother’s perfume. _Home_ , he thinks, tasting Yavin in his mouth.

* * *

Luke opens his eyes, in tears. He is lying in the desert. He is home. Or rather, he is in a place that is so like home it could only have been constructed from him, of him.

He is in the place that will take him back.

And after everything, he is still not ready.

He has not seen the two people he has most wanted to see. He has carried them as a bruise beneath his heart since the day they died and he stopped being a child. Luke cannot bear the thought of leaving without seeing them.

Beneath his body, the sand is a dull, distributed warmth. He cannot bring himself to get up. So he lies there, nursing his aches.

He senses the Force without needing to see it, like he did before this lapse into quasi-death. It is everywhere, always, and yet also _here_ , specific and expectant.

“Is that one of your rules, that I can’t see them unless I’m really dead? Am I being punished?” Luke asks, pushing himself up onto his knees. He does not trust his legs to hold him up.

 _If it is a rule, it is one you made for yourself_. It does not say, but it still tells.

“I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t understand. But I need to see them,” Luke begs. “Just one time.”

 _Then see them_.

The wind picks up, violent with gritty sand. Luke closes his eyes and shields his face.

Abruptly, the sand and the sound disappear.

Luke opens his eyes and finds himself sprawled on the floor of his childhood home. Beside him are Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, their hands on his shoulders and torso pulling him upright, onto his childhood bed. It feels like his muscles give out the moment they understand who is there.

“I _tried_ ,” Luke says, his voice cracking as he hides his head against Aunt Beru’s soft shoulder. “I tried so hard and it wasn’t enough and they died and you died and nothing ever changes.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Aunt Beru says, cradling him. “We’re here, we’re here.”

Her arms are warm. So is Uncle Owen’s hand over his forehead. They smell familiar, have the same calluses on their hands that Luke had forgotten. Luke wants to burrow down into this and not move, like he’s still a seven-year old with a fever. Because they were the first people to know him and love him, because they hold his first steps, his first words, his first heartbreaks, they let him stay like that, curled up. Desert-born and desert-bred, they were never demonstrative, but with him they have always been as patient as stone.

“Sit up now,” Owen finally tells him, direct but never unkind. “Sit up,” he repeats, workworn hands at Luke’s shoulders.

Luke nods and straightens his spine. Beru smoothes her hand down his hair, pushing it back away from his face.

“There you go,” she says, buoying him with her warm, tucked in smile.

“It seems to me the only thing left is to decide what you do next,” Owen says.

“Uncle Owen,” Luke says, swiping at his tears with rough hands, “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do. How can I possibly fix things now? I made so many mistakes.”

“The past doesn’t get undone, Luke,” Beru says, squeezing his hand. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do for the future.”

“When you can’t find water,” Owen begins.

“You need to make it,” Luke murmurs, finishing it with him. “But I don’t know how.”

Beru’s cool hand passes over his forehead, brushing back his hair again in a soothing, repetitive gesture. “You do, sweetheart,” she promised. “You do.”

Luke feels an ache in his chest, low and pulsing. (How many times had he called on his memories of her quiet kindnesses when he needed a reason, a reminder to reach for his own limited stores of graciousness.)

“I’m worried about getting it wrong again,” Luke confesses.

“We all worry about that,” Beru says. “We worried about getting it wrong with you all the time.”

“I made,” Luke licks his lips. “I made so many bad choices. Now, I’m afraid of doing nothing, but I keep thinking, if I do act, I’ll just make things worse.”

“You can’t know those things in advance. Same way you can’t predict the wind,” Owen says, giving a small one-shouldered shrug. “You did things wrong and you’ll do things wrong again, I’m sure. So then you make your fixes.”

“It sounds so simple, when you say it,” Luke says, grimacing a bit.

“No,” Owen shakes his head.

“We know it’s not,” Beru finishes for him. “The questions you’re facing are so big. We know it isn’t like deciding whether to replace a vaporator filter. But we know,” she nods, “that you’ll do your best to help that girl who’s been looking for you, and your sister, and that pilot of yours. And all the rest of them, too. You always have.”

Luke swallows.

“I used to — I used to hope you’d take over the farm, get married,” Owen says. “Raise some kids. I knew how to imagine that for you. I wanted a good life for you. I wanted you to be happy. Your father wasn’t a happy man. Didn’t take a genius to see that. It seemed to me,” he shakes his head. “It seemed that after everything your grandmother endured, you should have an easier life. Something simple.”

“But you were always meant for bigger things,” Beru says, smile fond and eyes wistful.

Luke blinks back against the tears that want to come, all too readily. “I was really happy,” he says, looking at them both in turn, their most welcome faces. “As a kid. I know — I complained so much. But I was happy. I didn’t tell you enough.”

“You were a kid,” Owen says, waving a dismissive hand.

“And we knew,” laughs Beru. “Luke, you’ve never been good at hiding things. You always laughed so easily.”

“I would have been happy at home, I think,” Luke says. “If I could have stayed.”

Owen shakes his head. “Maybe,” he says. “But maybe not. I wanted you safe. Sometimes safe isn’t enough.”

“You had such a brightness to you,” Beru murmurs. “I think you had to share it.”

“I wish you could have met —” Luke stops short, because the list is so long, people who he’s loved and who have made him laugh, or cry, or both. Leia and the children at the training temple and Poe, Han and Chewie, Lando and Rona, Luke’s squadron, the friends so he could never have conjured up in even in his restless teenage imagination.

“So do we,” Beru tells him, slipping his arm around his back and squeezing.

Luke rests his head on her shoulder again, lets himself settle there. “I miss you,” he whispers.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Beru says, pressing a kiss to his hair.  

“I don’t want to leave when I’ve only just seen you,” Luke says, because he can feel it again, the calling just beneath his skin.

“You’ve got everything we could teach you in there,” Owen says, laying a hand at the back of Luke’s head with unpracticed tenderness. “You remember that.”  

Luke squeezes his eyes shut so he sees starbursts beneath his eyelids. Then he opens them again and sits up.

Beru cups his face in her hands and tells him, “We love you, Luke. Very much. If nothing else, remember that.”

“I will,” Luke promises.

“You go help your friends now,” Owen nods.

Luke nods back. He blinks. And finds himself elsewhere, somewhere nebulous, the threshold of a dream. The Force is with him (it always is).

“For a long time,” Luke confesses, “I didn’t know whether I wanted to be alive anymore.” He doesn’t mean just now, but the long, terrible years that followed Ben’s massacre too.

 _Dead, alive_ , the Force says, with all their weight. _To you, these are differences. Do you forget? Dead and alive, all things belong to the cycle._

“I know,” Luke says. “I know that. That’s not what I meant.” He could try to pin down the chasm that lived in his chest with inadequate words, but he shakes his head. It's no longer the overpowering thing that it was. And he cannot look back any longer. He is so close to life now that he can almost feel his limbs and his need for breath. Can almost feel Leia in the room beside him.

So, instead, Luke says, “You’ve been with me my whole life and I still don’t understand you.”

 _What is there to understand?_ the Force asks. _I am all things._

“Always living and always dying?” Luke prompts.

 _Perhaps_ , the Force says.

Luke closes his eyes, takes a deep breath in and asks the question that has followed him since that first miracle shot at the Death Star. “How much of me is really you? How much of myself am I?”

 _How much of me is_ you _, Luke Skywalker?_ comes the response.

Luke shakes his head, teeth digging into his curled lower lip, some faint amusement warming his chest despite everything.

“Do I belong to myself or do I belong to you?” he attempts, one more time, not really expecting a response.

 _Yes_ , the Force says.

“Alright,” Luke agrees, letting the smile that wants to bubble up flit across his face. “I’m ready,” he promises, feeling a terrified swoop in his stomach. He closes his eyes, like falling asleep.

* * *

“Do it,” Leia tells them. And they do.

When Poe and Jess come back to Queen Zainabya with their answer, she beams in delight. It's the most singularly un-queenly behavior she’s engaged in since Poe and Jess met her.

“Oh, I’m _glad_ ,” she says, teeth flashing. Then her face settles back into her calm, marble facade. “I’ll contact our friends within the Emergency Government. This will be a great step forward in the reconciling of our people,” she says.

Poe nods and tries to keep his face set and neutral, eyes on the middle distance. Exactly as he was taught. ( _You will be afraid. You will be sick with it, but you must still lead. That is command._ )  His stomach roils.

He wants, badly, to go home. He is less than certain that home wants him back, when he stole himself and a whole squadron away long years ago now.

And yet, within a standard day, the arrangements have been made. They’ll meet the main contingent of the Fleet (what’s left of it), stationed on and around Chandrila, and be re-commissioned as officers of the Republic.

“I do not remember High Command ever making a decision this fast,” Jess mumbles to him, eyebrows arching up.

Poe nearly snorts.

They leave as dawn begins to seep blue-gray over Theed.

Beebee Eight beeps inquiringly from her station on Poe’s ship as he powers up and begins his pre-flight check.

“That’s right,” Poe agrees. “We’re going back to the Republic. Hmm? Yeah, you remember, all the Republic starfighter pilots have astromech droids, too. None as great as you, of course.”

Beebee takes the compliment as nothing more than due, naturally, but has another question.

Poe swallows. “Yeah, I think they’ll be glad to have you back,” he says. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath in and flips his comm on. “All systems are go. Pava?”

“All set,” Jess responds. “Let’s do this thing!”

They jump out of hyperspace within visual range of Chandrila and Juha Starbase, in orbit around the planet, three standard days later.

“Ready?” Jess asks over the comms.

Poe adjusts his grip on his navigational controls. “Well, we’re here. Might as well go in,” he agrees, easing his ship in towards the starbase.

They land their ships side by side in the hangar bay. Poe whispers a half-remembered prayer from his childhood, something his abuelo taught him, something meant to help bring his parents home safe and whole. Then Poe pops the hatch of his ship, sees Jess do the same out of the corner of his eye, and climbs out.

His boots hit the floor with an echoing thud.

Standing stark and alone in the landing bay is a very familiar figure.

Poe gapes. “Commander Relan-Deyi!” he exclaims, his voice coming back to him in a swoop of brilliant shock. “You’re alive.”

“Sir!” Jess echoes, voice bright with unexpected joy.

The Commander’s older. Her hair has gone entirely gray, but she still wears it swept back into the severe bun she always favored. “Well observed. But it’s General now,” she informs them. “I’m here to accept your surrender.”

Poe sets his teeth against each other.

“And to reinstate you as officers of the Republic Fleet,” General Relan-Deyi continues, cool and bland. “If you would?” she prompts, holding out a hand.

They’d been warned about this.

Poe reaches up to his chest and unclips his Resistance badge. He grips it tightly in his fist, the edges digging into his palm. Beside him, Jess rubs her thumb over hers, so recently upgraded to a captain’s badge.

General Relan-Deyi keep her cupped hand completely steady.

Jess meets Poe’s eyes, a question in them. Poe nods and watches as Jess sets her shoulders and presses her badge into General Relan-Deyi’s palm. She steps back, crisp and orderly, despite her tangled hair.

Poe grips his badge tighter for one more brief moment and then drops it into General Relan-Deyi’s hand. It makes a soft clanging noise, hitting against Jess’s badge.

General Relan-Deyi tucks the badges into a pocket, looks up at them both again, and nods. “Thank you. Welcome back, Commander Dameron, Captain Pava. You’ve missed a great deal. We will need to catch you up on quite a few developments. And of course, we have,” she tips her head to a slight, considering angle, “a number of questions, suffice to say.” She turns sharply. “But first, uniforms. Follow me.”

She begins walking, not turning back to check that they’re following. Jess glances up at Poe and hurries after her and after one sweeping glance over the landing bay, Poe does the same.

Relan-Deyi leads them down a hallway, officers nodding at her, their accustory eyes shuttering or widening, stuttering away and back when they see Poe and Jess.

Poe searches for something to say and settles on the truth.

“I’m glad you’re here. There’s no one I trust more when it comes to defending the Republic,” Poe says, stripped down to the truth in these strange circumstances. His old mentor being alive feels almost miraculous, some bright vision when he had never even imagined it possible.

“Don’t give me false flattery, Dameron,” General Relan-Deyi responds, glancing at him for only one short moment, dismissive. “If you had believed that, this entire situation would never have occurred. You two defected. You clearly trusted someone else more.”

“Sir,” Poe says, but he has nothing else.

They halt before a set of doors and General Relan-Deyi holds up a hand. “Enough. I don’t need to hear your explanations. In another lifetime, it would be the very least you both owed the Fleet,” she says. “But we have far more pressing concerns. You’ve been on the front. The Fleet has not. The First Order is coming and I will not cede a single star system. Not to those murderers. So I expect your best.”

An ensign appears then, holding crisply folded clothes in a stack. “Your uniforms,” xe says.

“Get changed,” Relan-Deyi orders. “You begin debriefing in ten minutes.”

The collar of the uniform feels stiff and more unfamiliar than it ought to. The material chafes against the skin over Poe’s collarbone during the hours of debriefing.

At hour eight, Captain Evit and Captain Uir, the Intelligence officers leading his debrief, pause to confer, via soft mutters and quick glances.

Poe takes a drink of water. “So, do you want to talk First Order supply chain weaknesses next? Or we could mix it up, and you could finally let me share some of my daring exploits,” he says, determinedly attempting for jaunty, if only out of a sense of spite. It’s like Intelligence officers eat and drink data, have no need to get up and stretch their limbs. “Much more fun, I promise.”

“No,” Captain Evit says with a gentleness that borders on pity. “Actually, we’d like to wrap up. That’s enough for today. We thought you would want to use the comms. Perhaps make some personal calls to loved ones in Republic space.”

“Oh,” Poe says, pressing a palm tight against his thigh. “I — yes. I’d like that.”

They leave him in spare quarters with a holo comm. Poe boots it up. His hands, steady through firefights and funerals, tremble as he punches in a familiar code.

Poe has been waiting for seven years to be able to say this. And yet when the moment comes, it is sudden like a jolt. There, blooming before Poe, is the holographic image of his father.

“ _Mijo_?” his father asks, a creaky, shocked whisper. He looks so much older, weathered in a way no unpredictable typhoon season or bad harvest had ever done. Poe’s chest aches sharply.  

“Hi, Papá,” Poe says, voice catching. “I came back.”

* * *

“Leia,” Luke whispers — or he thinks so, he thinks he’s talking but how strange, to have vocal cords again, and thirst. “Rey.”

“We’re right here,” his sister says. Her cool hand smooths back his hair and she presses a kiss to his forehead. “Welcome back.”

Luke only vaguely knows what happens for those first minutes or hours or days (isn't time so very strange?), floating in and out of sleep and wakefulness.

There are doctors and medics and he thinks, perhaps, Lando telling him some story about a daring data heist. Sometimes there’s Leia, murmuring to him, a mixture of berating and embracing. Familiar enough to be a grounding comfort — _my sister_ _is here; she hears me_. There’s Rey, often, muttering aloud to herself and asking him questions he can’t concentrate long enough to answer.

The living universe is harder to hold onto than the other. It makes demands of his body. It tells him he must eat, he must drink, he must wake his muscles again, that he cannot subsist on dreams and memories.

It is as hard as he remembered and the temptation of stasis is so strong, like claws, or a lullaby. But Luke has promises to keep and faces he wants so much to see.

 _Live_ , the Force tells him. _That is my will_.

And Luke does.

* * *

Four days into their return, Poe’s woken abruptly by the shriek of his new personal comm device, issued to him by the Fleet. Reaching blindly, Poe smacks it on and sits up, as Leia’s face appears before him.

“Sir,” Poe says, opening his eyes wide and then blinking, trying to banish sleep.

“I’m not calling with orders,” Leia says. “I wanted you to know — Luke woke up.”

Poe feels like gravity just gave out around him.

“And he’s — he’s okay?” he manages to choke out, because awake is not the same thing as well.

“He’s conscious, he’s spoken, his reflexes are responding . . . more or less normally, and there’s no signs of brain damage, unlikely as that sounds,” Leia reports.

Poe heaves out a breath, trying to keep upright, trying not to slump all the way down into bed. He is, ridiculously, about to cry. “Is he, um, do you think I could talk to him?” he asks, distantly embarrassed for himself — he is an officer of the Republic Fleet, a Resistance commander, has been wearing a uniform since he turned seventeen — but unable to keep from asking anyway.

Leia’s eyes are too sympathetic. “He’s only conscious in snatches right now. Kalonia says that’s normal. Rey will patch you through if she can catch you at a time when he’s awake.”

“Thank you. And thank you for telling me,” Poe says. Then he forces his spine to straighten again.

“Of course,” Leia agrees.

“Since we’re on, shall I give you the Fleet’s status update now?” Poe asks, reordering his mind.

Leia studies him for a beat and then nods. “Go ahead, Dameron,” she says. “What do you have for me?”

In the end, the call isn’t long — they have a holomeeting between Resistance Command and Fleet Intelligence later in the day as is — but it’s just as well, because Poe can’t concentrate, can’t hold anything in his mind except the fact that Luke is awake, that the next time Poe speaks to him, he’ll be able to answer.

Poe wants to run dozens of laps, wants to cry or scream, wants to pull himself up a tree, branch by branch until the sky greets him. Anything to channel the roiling, restless energy he has, the gratitude that feels like too much to contain in his body.

That’s when Jess enters, saying “Let’s get foo—” and Poe jumps up to his feet to greet her.

“Oh shit, what happened?” Jess asks, arms reaching out.

Poe swipes his forearm across his watery eyes and laughs. “No, it’s okay,” he says, reaching back and squeezing Jess’s hand. “Luke’s awake.”

Jess thumps down on his bunk, wide-eyed. “Oh,” she says. She lets out a sigh, her whole spine unbending. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Poe says, tipping himself back onto the bed beside her. He splays his arms out and laughs up to the cold metal ceiling. “It’s good.”

* * *

It takes days before Luke can stay awake and aware for more than a few minutes at a time. His mind is muddled, but finally he’s able to translate at least one ache into an absence.

“Leia,” he mumbles, when he opens his eyes to her sitting at a table in his room, working. “Where’s Poe?”

He would know, he thinks, if something were wrong. But he hasn’t seen Poe, hasn’t heard his voice. He’s afraid to know what that means, but more afraid of the possibilities his mind has begun to offer.  

“You don’t know?” Leia asks, turning her head and raising an eyebrow.

Luke shakes his head. The room tilts. His body feels momentarily unmoored from gravity and reason. He grits his teeth against the nausea.

“So no more shared dreams, then?” Leia asks.

Luke blinks, a shock of wakefulness clearing his vision.

“Could you always do that, or is that a new thing?” Leia continues conversational. “I’ve been wondering about that. I know we’ve swapped nightmares before, but I put that down to a twin thing.”

“I didn’t even know it was possible,” Luke croaks.

“Hm,” Leia responds. “Interesting. Drink your water.”

Luke concentrates on sitting up and picking up the cup beside his bed. Follows Leia’s order.

She turns back to her work, adding lightly, “Poe’s on Chandrila. Or, well, to be accurate, he’s on a Republic starbase in orbit around Chandrila.”

“What?” Luke blinks.

“Back with the Republic Fleet,” she says, which is only barely more clarifying. “We’re in negotiations to reintegrate the Resistance into the Republic. Poe and Jessika Pava were in the right place at the right time. So they ended up being our advance guard, so to speak.”

Luke frowns, trying to consider this.

“What?” Leia asks, one eyebrow raised. “You’re not the only problem I’ve been dealing with.”

“Yeah,” Luke agrees, flicking a non-existent speck of dust off his blanket. “I know.”

“He’s been asking about you,” Leia says, her face softening. “You could call him. He’d like that.”

Luke swallows. “Now?” he asks, voice coming out softer than he’d meant.

“If you’re ready,” Leia offers.

“Yes,” Luke says, his tongue tumbling over itself in haste, without any pause to consult his brain. _Is_ he ready? Maybe not, but he wants to hear Poe’s voice. He wants even a facsimile of Poe’s face.

Leia narrows her eyes at him for a moment and says, “Alright.” She gathers her things, repositions what Luke hadn’t even noticed was a holo comm, and punches in a code. “You hit call and you’ll get his line.”

Luke grabs out for her hand and squeezes. “Thank you,” he says.

Leia arches an eyebrow at him. “Just remember you owe me the next time you think about running off,” she says, giving him a faint smile.

Luke has owed her his whole life, he thinks. “I will,” he promises anyway. He watches her walk out into the hallway, staring for a moment at the door as it slides shut behind her.

Then, stomach flipping, Luke presses the call button on the comm. It makes uncertain sounds for a few agonizing moments before anything happens. Abruptly, Poe’s holographic image, from the shoulders up, appears.

Poe’s mouth drops open for a second before he seals it again.

Jess and Ello and the kids had always teased him about looking like he’d just stepped out of a Fleet recruitment poster. Most of the time in response he’d laugh and strike a pose, let Enu snap a picture while she just short of cackled. Even captured entirely imperfectly by the flickering holoprojector, he is so beautiful that Luke’s fingers long to reach out and touch.

“Hi, Poe,” Luke manages.

“Hey,” Poe says, eyebrows drawing together, his eyes flitting around quickly, like he’s assessing a battle scene. “You’re, um — You look good.”

Luke’s startled into a laugh. “You don’t need to lie,” he says. “I look like I woke up from a coma a week ago.”

“It’s an improvement from the ‘currently in a coma’ look?” Poe offers, a faint, still worried smile twitching up at the edges of his mouth.

“Yeah, well, you know me,” Luke says, too focused on drinking in the sight of Poe to concentrate on what he’s saying really, “I aim to please.”

“Like hell!” Poe suddenly laughs — the connection does a terrible job capturing it, but Luke’s mind can fill in the details, the sudden emergence of the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. “You’ve never done that in your entire life.”

“Ouch,” Luke murmurs, not even attempting to sound offended. “Insulting an invalid?”

“You’re not an invalid,” Poe insists, the smile dropping instantly.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Luke says, soft but carefully clear. He misses Poe’s laughter. “Don’t worry.”

“Are you tired?” Poe asks, the furrow between his eyebrows lessening only slightly. “Leia said you couldn’t stay awake very long.”

“Yeah. I’m still tired,” Luke says. “But I think I've slept more than long enough. I — wanted to talk to you.”

Poe swallows. “I wanted to talk to you, too,” he says. “I wish I were there,” he adds, in a sudden rush. “I wanted to be there. When you woke up.”

“I know,” Luke says, because he does. He thinks of how easily Poe slipped into his arms in their dream, the unquestioning warmth of it, and it overshadows the doubt and fear that have eaten at him. “But you’re where you need to be,” he says, the words tumbling out. “And we’ll see each other soon. I know it.”

“Luke,” Poe says, voice going hoarse. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Luke says. “More than I can say.”

“Don’t disappear again,” Poe demands.

There’s nothing Luke can say to that. No apology that would be sufficient.

Poe keeps talking, though. “You were just — gone. I didn’t even know if you were dead or not. For _years_. You can’t do that again.”

“I’m not planning to,” Luke says, because that at least is a truthful promise. There is Rey to train, Leia to assist however he can, the Resistance to guard. Another war to face. But equally — “I’d like,” Luke swallows. “I want to see you again.”

Poe’s expression softens. Luke thinks that if the hologram could properly capture his eyes, they’d be the same warm brown they are in Luke’s memories — Poe’s affectionate eyes meeting his across the table as Za’im tells some long, rambling child-story, or slowly blinking awake in Luke’s bed.

“I want to see you, too,” Poe says.

Luke’s chest feels liquid warm.

* * *

Maybe it should be silly, but talking to Luke makes everything easier for Poe to shoulder — the cold stares in the mess hall, the hesitance with which people approach him and the questions, the interminable reintegration negotiations he has to sit in on. Now, he has something to dream about at night.

At the end of their daily meeting with General Relan-Deyi, she dismisses them with, “Thank you, Captain, Commander. We’ll make the training adjustments for the junior officers tomorrow and you’ll keep me updated.”

“Thank you, sir,” Poe echoes back, alongside Jess — how little the niceties of Fleet life have changed in the time they’ve been gone — but remains sitting as Jess rises, possessed by some impossible sense of confidence.  

Jess narrows her eyes at him, a question, but files out when Poe shakes his head. He’s got an idea and he’s going to see it through.

Relan-Deyi looks up again, raising one eyebrow at Poe. “Is there anything else?” she asks.

Poe looks down at the floor, the same dull silver metal common to most Republic starbases.

“Actually, yes,” he says, diving in. “Are you ever planning on forgiving me?” he asks.

“Have you found my conduct since your return less than professional?” Relan-Deyi asks, wearing her most neutral listening expression.

“No,” Poe replies. “You're always consummately professional, sir. The thing is — I don't know if you remember this — but you actually used to like me,” he adds, leaning back and casually hooking his arm over the corner of the chair. An echo of all the times he’d been called to her Academy office for some strongly worded guidance and twitching, reluctant smiles. “I think the term you used was incorrigible?”

Relan-Deyi purses her lips slightly, then looks sideways, out the viewport. She sighs. “You're not a boy, anymore, Dameron, and saints know you’re certainly not my student. You don’t need my _approval_ and I don’t need yours,” she says.

“That’s true,” Poe nods, sitting up. “We can both go ahead and do our jobs just fine with you pretending you’d never seen me before Jess and I got out in that landing bay. Be a credit to the Fleet and all of that. But wasn’t it more fun, being friends?”

Relan-Deyi sets her mouth into a straight, unhappy line. “Friends,” she echoes back to him, enunciating the word carefully, as if the concept is foreign to her. She’s silent long enough that Poe’s about to start speaking again. But then she says, “To be entirely frank, Dameron, you disappointed me. You defected at a moment when we most needed voices like yours. New leadership from among the ranks. Your time was coming and you weren’t there to meet it.”

Poe’s shoulder prickle with defiance and he opens his mouth to protest, because that’s not a fair thing to say, not when the Fleet and the Republic had made noises of mourning but then turned their backs. But Relan-Deyi holds up a hand.

“I don’t doubt you had what felt like compelling reasons,” she says. “I know even before the massacre, it hadn’t been the easiest time for you —”

Poe swallows. Relan-Deyi hadn’t been able to come to his mother’s memorial, but she’d sent a note that made his father close his eyes and clutch at it. Mamá had died more than a standard year before the training temple burned, but Poe’s grief had been a strange, unpredictable beast, rising up to claw at him just when he’d thought he’d made some kind of peace with it.

“Perhaps we should have predicted it, considering your personal relationship with the temple on Thaela,” Relan-Deyi continues. “And of course, your family history. Given a few more years, I did wonder if your mother would have dragged your father . . .” she trails off, shaking her head.

Poe looks down. He’s wondered that, too. Back then, his father never wanted to go back to war, not when he’d fought so hard for it to done, definitively, closed book. But if anyone could have convinced him, it was Mamá.

“But you took an _entire_ squadron with you,” Relan-Deyi says, focused again. “Do you know what we could have done with that kind of leadership?”

“Ignored it?” Poe hits back. “The Fleet’s always been good at that.”

Relan-Deyi raises her eyebrows just slightly, challenging. “You’re asking about my forgiveness, but it seems you haven’t exactly resolved to forgive _me_.”

“There’s nothing to forgive _you_ for,” Poe says, feeling his spine soften under him. “I know that.”

“But the Fleet?” Relan-Deyi presses.

Poe sets his jaw.

Relan-Deyi nods, as if that’s all she needs to know, when it’s hardly that simple. But Poe hadn’t gone into this intending an argument, still doesn’t want one. He’d always liked her for the challenge she’d set for him — _I think you can do better; now prove me right._ He misses that.

“Forgiveness is a process, I find,” Relan-Deyi says. “One that, evidently, we will both need to work on.”

Poe takes a breath in, takes a breath out. “That’s fair,” he agrees, brushing his hands down his legs and standing. “Look, I want to be here. I believe in what we’re doing. Bringing the Resistance and the Republic back together. Whatever else there is to work through, I’m committed to that.”

Relan-Deyi stands as well. “As am I. And I will . . . consider your point of view. As I hope you will consider mine.”  

It’s not quite enough, but Poe’s done more with less before. “Thank you, sir,” Poe nods.

He’s almost out the door when Relan-Deyi’s voice comes over his shoulder, saying, “And thank you, Commander.”

Poe smiles and walks out in the hallway.

* * *

As the days pass, Luke grows more mobile and so does the Resistance. Batch by batch, personnel are leaving for the Republic.

But still, when Rey can’t seem to stop fidgeting during their daily meditation, he doesn’t expect her answer to his raised eyebrow.

“Rose? The mechanic you met?” she stumbles, “She’s one of the people who left for Chandrila today. I’m distracted, I guess.”

Luke knows about that feeling, of being left behind when friends were moving forward. He can’t fold away the distance between the base they’re on and Chandrila, but he can at least provide a distraction.

“You’re worried for a friend,” Luke assesses. “Alright, let’s do something else. That kind of thing makes it hard to concentrate.”

Rey looks momentarily surprised — though whether that’s about Luke cutting meditation short or the thought that she can claim Rose as a friend, Luke’s not sure.

“Would you like to do some physical training? Or we could work on your plans for your new lightsaber,” Luke offers.

Rey looks contemplative for a long moment. “Can I ask a question, instead?” Rey finally says, dragging out her words.

Based on past experience with Rey’s incredible stubbornness, Luke very much doubts it would matter if he said no. As a preemptive gesture, he just nods.

Rey looks down at her hands, eyebrows drawn together. “All the places I saw with you, when you were unconscious,” she starts slowly. “Were they . . . memories? They didn’t _feel_ like that, exactly.”

“No,” Luke agrees. “I don’t think they were. Some places I’d never been before.”

Rey tips her chin sideways, puzzled. “So if they weren’t yours, they were someone else’s?”

Luke finds his gaze drifting sideways as he contemplates. “Maybe in part,” he says. “I think I had some influence over where I was, though. A little bit me, a little bit them. A little bit —”

“The Force?” Rey asks.

Luke nods.

“Do you think being dead is like that?” she asks, soft, picking at a rip in her tunic.

Luke studies her face and then says, “I don’t know. Maybe I couldn’t really know because I wasn’t dead. Or maybe it’s different for everyone.”

Rey twists her lips together but then lets her shoulders loosen, sighing a little. “Okay,” she says. “But the places where I saw you, they were all real, weren’t they?”

Luke thinks he could answer the question yes or no and still be telling the truth, but the sheer unnecessary obscurity his teachers had displayed still frustrates him, a lifetime later. So he says, “Yes, they’re all — or were — real places in the galaxy. I don’t know how many of them look like what you saw now.”

Rey curls in on herself, contracting like she’s nursing injury.

Luke looks down and away.

“I’m glad I got to see to Hosnia,” Rey says finally. “Or — grateful, anyway. I’d heard about it, a little. I always thought the things people said just sounded like stories. But I understand now.”

“It was a beautiful planet,” Luke says, pressing his flesh-and-blood fingers to his chest, trying to ease an ache that isn’t bodily.

Rey opens her mouth, but says nothing for a moment, uncharacteristically uncertain. Luke waits and watches as her resolve settles over her shoulders and she uncurls them.

“The temple was beautiful, too,” Rey says.

Luke cannot speak. He nods, though, because it was.

“Maybe,” Rey pauses. “Maybe one day you could tell me about them? Your students and everyone else there.”

Luke blinks against the tears in his eyes. “I’d like that,” he says.

* * *

Now that Poe and Jess are Fleet officers once more, they’re entitled all the privileges therein — including regular leave. It’s not that the Resistance didn’t have leave, but they didn’t exactly have the freedom to wander the galaxy at their own will. They certainly couldn’t go home.

The reintegration process and negotiations have converged into a slow routine, six weeks into Poe and Jess’s return — there are now other Resistance personnel and fighters on Juha Starbase with them and on Chandrila, with the Emergency Government in Hanna City. But it’ll be a few more weeks before the final full contingent, traveling with Leia, arrives.

For now, they have leave. Poe hops an Outer-Rim-bound transport, makes a transfer seven standard hours in, and then he’s stepping onto the tarmac on Yavin. His father is standing there, waiting for him.

Poe cries, hugs his father, and then falls to his knees to kiss the familiar ground. There is no soil like Yavin’s, no air as sweet.

“Come on,” Papá says, putting a hand on Poe’s shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

At home, Poe sheds his dusty fatigues in his childhood bedroom, staring at all the paraphernalia of his life before.

“Come eat,” Papá calls from the kitchen.

Poe stares for a moment more and then blinks. He follows the scent of sizzling bantha steak and roasting daro root down the hallway.

His father is setting two plates — and a third, smaller portion aside, in front of a bank of burning candles for the gods. Poe raises his eyebrows. Papá’s never been a believer.

Papá scratches at the back of his head and mutters, “It’s not every day your kid comes home after seven years at war. I figured I’d say thank you, just in case.”

“Abuelo’d be proud,” Poe grins.

Papá rolls his eyes lightly. “I’m sure he would.”

“I’ve wanted this _exact_ meal for seven years,” Poe says, sitting down and taking a deep breath in.

Papá sits too, takes a swig of his ale, and says, “I know. You’ve told me so repeatedly. I could take a hint.”

Poe grins. But when he takes his first bite, the familiar spices in his mouth, suddenly everything comes rushing over him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be gone so long,” Poe says, voice breaking.

Papá sits up, reaches across the table to squeeze Poe’s hand. “Do you remember when your mom and I came home?” Papá asks. “You hugged us hello and then you barely spoke to us for the whole first two weeks we were back. Quietest I’ve ever seen you, before or since.”

Poe winces. “I — yeah, I remember,” he confesses. “I’m sorry.”

At eight-pushing-nine, Poe had been happy, ecstatic really, to see them. But he hadn’t trusted that they were staying, and certainly didn’t know what to do with parents who were actually physically there, not just voices and images from lightyears away. He’d been old enough to have some idea that he was hurting them with his suspicion and avoidance, but part of him had felt it was only just — now they knew what it felt like.

Papá shakes his head. “No, you were a kid and we hadn’t come to see you in more than a year. Of course you weren’t happy,” he says. “But if you could forgive us for missing all those birthdays, for missing you starting school, then, _mijo_ , how could I _not_ forgive you for following your convictions?”

“I just — I didn’t want you to be alone,” Poe mumbles.

Papá shakes his head, smiling. “Always such a bleeding heart. And always with the drama. You think I’ve got no friends? Hell, you think I don’t hear from your aunts and uncles all the time, whether I want to or not?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Poe protests, though he’s glad of his father’s amusement.

“I know,” Papá agrees. “Now eat your food.”

Since Poe’s been eaten a truly astonishing amount of terrible rations in the years since he was last home, he immediately does as he’s told. “So, but,” Poe says between bites, “you’ve been okay?”

“Yeah, kid,” Papá says, smiling slightly. “I’ve been okay. Just like I’ve been saying every time you’ve called. I mean, worried about you. But what else is new?”

“Okay, okay,” Poe says, holding up his hands, smiling back. “I get it. The farm’s thriving, I’m the source of all your gray hair,” Poe contemplates adding a comment about how little of it is left, but decides magnanimously to save it for tomorrow, “and everything’s exactly the same as always on Yavin.”

“Sounds about right,” Papá agrees.

“Good,” Poe says.

By the time they finish dinner, Poe’s already yawning.

“Go to sleep,” Papá says, leaning down to kiss the top of Poe’s head. It’s such a familiar gesture.

Poe clasps the hand his father has on his shoulder for a moment. “I will,” he says. “I just want to — I thought I’d light a candle on Mamá’s altar first.”

Papá’s hand squeezes Poe’s shoulder tighter. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “You do that.”  

Poe carries a candle out to his mother’s Remembrance altar, outside, beneath the wide climbing trees, surrounded by the call of wildlife. Carefully, he places the candle before the smooth stone that bears her name and lights it, keeping his hand protectively cupped around the flame until it gains strength.

Then he sits back, cross-legged, taking in the sounds of the night jungle, and watches the flame dance.

* * *

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Luke watches the blur of hyperspace out of the viewport. He’s not quite meditating, but not doing anything else either. It’s strange to be heading back to civilization.

“Interesting view?” Leia asks, bone dry, from behind him.

He felt her come in, but he turns around now, smiling slightly and shrugging.

“Just thinking,” he says.

“Hmm.” Leia settles into a chair.

Luke rises, dusts himself off, and joins her at the table.

“So,” Leia says, looking at him with narrowed eyes and then settling her intertwined fingers in her lap. “I think it’s past time we talked about Ben.”

Luke takes a breath in, lets it out. He’d known this moment was coming and would have done just about anything to keep it away.

“Yes,” he agrees still, because — because meeting Leia was like part of himself slotting into place, as if the tiny twisted knot in his chest that been there his whole life had finally unwound. He has never been good at saying no to her, because he missed years of being able to say yes.

Leia continues to study him, lips thin and pressed together. Then, abruptly, she declares, “You’re my brother. I _forgive you_.”

Luke feels his chest clench, a sharp pain that echoes through hollows of his breastbone. He flinches into himself.

“All I wanted was for you to come home,” Leia says, reaching for his hand. “For you and Ben both to come home,” she amends, swiftly and brutally breaking Luke’s heart. Her hand grips tighter. “But I couldn’t have that. Maybe I always knew I couldn’t. I thought, if Darth Vader could change his mind, after everything he’d done —” she shakes her head.

“Leia,” Luke says, finding his voice abruptly hoarse.

“No,” she says. “Let me finish. I need to finish.”

Luke swallows, but squeezes her hand.

“He wasn’t a child, when he did what he did,” Leia continues. “We loved him and we raised him and so we wanted to believe he could never do such a thing, not on his own.” Her gaze is out towards the distance, through the viewport. She is thinking of the lights in the galaxy that are no longer; Luke knows. “ _I_ wanted to.”

“He wasn’t alone,” Luke points out, gentle as he can.

“No,” Leia agrees. “Empires are never one man. They need thousands, millions, more. And they need weapons. That’s what Ben became, didn’t he?” She turns to face him.

Luke meets her gaze, though it is the most difficult thing he could face. “I never wanted that for him,” he whispers.

“No, of course not,” Leia dismisses. “They tried to do that with you.” Luke means to object, he thinks, but Leia shakes her head and continues. “So you tried to do the opposite.” She looks down, blinking. “I hoped — I hoped he might be like my father. Or like my mother. Gentle. But Ben always had our temper, didn’t he?”

“None of it was _set_ ,” Luke says. “His fate wasn’t written. You had a son. All of that was real, too.

He’d been such a sweet-looking baby, with dark, curious eyes, and dark, unruly hair; none of them, orphans all, quite knew where Ben had gotten his features from.

“Yes. I know that,” Leia says. “Do you?”

Luke swallows. “I’m trying.”

Leia nods.

They sit together in silence as the ship continues its journey, bearing them back.

“Leia?” Luke finally says, slowly, unsure. “Han wanted you to know —”

Leia holds up a hand. “He can tell me when we’re together again,” she says.

Luke watches her breathe in and out, eyes tightly closed. Then she opens her eyes again, a hint of a smile gracing her features. “Besides, how many times have you known that man to say something I didn’t already know?”

“That’s what I told him,” Luke agrees, meeting her faint smile with one of his own. But still — “I’m sorry we both left. That we both weren’t here.”

“I know. You’ll make it up to me,” Leia responds, level and certain like she’s setting her terms, no negotiation. “Whatever we do from now on,” she says, “we do together.”

“Yes,” Luke promises.

* * *

It's raining on Chandrila, the day the Resistance arrives. Poe and Jess cram into the Fleet transport early in the morning with the rest of the carefully selected honor guard, made up of Republic and Resistance fighters alike. When they get to Mon Mothma's tomb, a whole array of security forces are already at stations. There's a faint gray mist hanging over Hanna City, cloaking the monument.

The last time Poe had been in Hanna City, he’d been a nineteen-year-old Academy cadet on field training, and Mon Mothma was still alive.

She'd died that first year Poe was posted to Thaela. Luke had returned from Chandrila after the funeral, Ben in tow, shoulders curled in by some broad, unutterable exhaustion. Three weeks later, Leia Organa had resigned her post as Senator and disappeared. It wasn't long until Poe and everyone else in the Fleet was being briefed about a new paramilitary force arising at the edge of Republic space.

The statue above the tomb is a striking, uncanny depiction. The Chancellor is regal, but not quite human. The pale shining stone of her frozen face looks out to edge of the Silver Sea. Chin tilted slightly upward, eyes just above the horizon.

Poe stares at the statue, nursing a mug of steaming caf in the personnel tent. Wonders what Chancellor Mothma saw coming.

The crowds — and the press — begin arriving hours before Leia and the Republic government luminaries, or rather those who have stepped in to fill their spots, are due to be there.

As the dawn brightens and spreads into day, Poe, Jess, and the rest of the honor guard take their position, arrayed along the ascending layers of low steps before the tomb.

The faint, plaintive music and the restless movement from the crowd alert Poe to the fact that Leia and the Acting Chancellor, followed by their respective retinues, are approaching. They’re walking, as if this is a particularly well-guarded, well-watched pilgrimage.

Poe glances up discreetly, checking the position of the hovercrafts above them, circling. He’d much rather be up in the air himself. Not here, being drizzled on in a dress uniform, stomach churning.

It would ruin the poetry of the moment, or so the press liaison officers had said, to have armed guards follow Leia and the Acting Chancellor too closely. Maybe there’s some truth to it, but it’s not making Poe feel better, with the sound of the watching crowd behind him and the burning memories of First Order atrocities playing in his mind.

But then, there’s Leia walking down the cobblestones, proud face framed by her mourning braids, holding a overspilling bundle of white flowers. Beside her, the Acting Chancellor, a mournful-eyed Mon Calamari, carefully carries a wreath of carved coral, the red-brown close to her own shade.

They walk closer with deliberate steps, past the gathered crowds with their outreached limbs, past the buzzing press, past Poe and the rest of the honor guard flanking the stairs. Then they’re standing beneath the statue, dwarfed by it. They bend in unison to place the flowers and the wreath. When they straighten, Leia places an open palm to the base of the statue and leans in, until her forehead presses against the marble. The Acting Chancellor places a webbed hand to her shoulder and keeps it there.

Poe closes his eyes, to sear the image there. There will be countless holos of this day, he’s sure. Images that will be passed down through history. But he needs to remember this for himself, needs to carry it. Let it carry him.

* * *

After interminable rounds of greetings with Emergency Government officials who are coming and going from the negotiating rooms, Luke and Rey are finally ushered away to their hotel rooms.

As he heads the few extra steps down the hallway from Rey’s appointed room, he hears Rey gasp, “Is that _whole thing_ a bath?” to herself as the doors close behind her.

Luke leaves her to it, entering his own similarly appointed room. He sits down heavily on the couch and pulls off his boots and socks. Wriggles his toes into the plush pale blue carpet. That is, somehow, the most surreal part of the day.

He thinks he might be on the verge of sleep when the door beeps — there’s a visitor outside. Luke shakes off his tiredness, decides against shoes, and opens the door.

“Hi,” Poe says, glancing down and then back up, a smile blooming across his face. He’s still in his dress uniform, upright and so handsome that it aches.

“Hi,” Luke echoes back. His muscles all want to sigh and melt up against the doorframe but Luke’s brain would like to preserve some semblance of dignity.

Poe glances down both sides of the hallway and ducks inside quickly before Luke can decide what to do, one warm hand over Luke’s ribs, pulling him away from the door.

“You’re hiding me,” Poe declares as the doors slide shut.

“Am I?” Luke asks, stepping in closer to Poe so he can rest his hands on Poe’s chest, fingers curving up toward his shoulders. Poe is so warm. “Hiding you from what?”

“The press liaison officer who’s stalking me,” Poe says, slipping his hand around to Luke’s back. Slowly, like he’s not quite certain of his welcome, or like he’s trying not to startle Luke.

Luke pulls his mind back, with difficulty, thinks about what Poe said and blinks. “Should I be doing that?” he asks. Leia and the Resistance (and the Republic, really) need for these final days of negotiation to go well far more than Luke needs to be held, and Poe’s a part of it.

“Like you’re fond of handlers,” Poe says, tightening his arm around Luke’s waist slightly. “That’s literally why you started a tiny teaching commune in the middle of nowhere. So no one would bother you.”

“There were a _few_ other reasons,” Luke feels the need to point out. Tentatively, he slides his hand, the flesh one, up to Poe’s neck to trace a finger along the line of a tendon.

Poe swallows, opens his mouth slightly. “Yeah,” he says belatedly.  

Luke wants very badly to kiss him. He starts to lean in. But then through the door, comes the sound of footsteps down the hall and Poe goes very still.

“Do you want me to check who it is?” Luke asks doubtfully, pulling away slightly. He’s trying and failing to push away the swoop of disappointment in his stomach.

“No, don’t open the door!” Poe says, tugging Luke closer again with the hand at his waist. “Can’t you just . . .” Poe waves his other hand vaguely around Luke’s temple.

Luke purses his lips. This, he’s pretty sure, is why Yoda always said the Force wasn’t for tricks. “You know I can’t figure out if it’s a specific person if I don’t know who I’m sensing _for_ ,” he says.

The footsteps pause, keep moving, and then double back down the hallway, starting to fade away.

“Do they actually need you?” Luke forces himself to ask.

“No. I don’t think so,” Poe says. Luke’s never been good at hiding when he’s dubious of something, though, so Poe follows up immediately with, “ _Really_. Jess and I already talked to — I don’t even know, five different press outlets? After the ceremony today. We’re not scheduled for anything else and honestly I don’t think I’d be useful anymore. You’re helping the diplomatic process by keeping me from saying something rude to a reporter,” Poe promises, widening his eyes.

“An important contribution,” Luke says dryly.

“Absolutely,” Poe agrees, with a grin. It doesn’t hide the way the skin around his eyes looks tight with weariness.

“Do you want to sit down?” Luke asks, taking a step toward the plush couch.

Poe doesn’t follow. “I — yeah. But. Would you just _stay still_ a second?” Poe huffs, reaching out and gripping Luke's shoulder with his free hand.

“Yes?” Luke raises his eyebrows. He’s very conscious of Poe’s hands, even through the fabric.

Poe smiles, shakes his head, eyes cast down. “I just want to,” he cuts himself off suddenly and leans in and —

His lips are chapped. It doesn’t matter; Luke presses into the kiss immediately, fingers grasping at the material of Poe’s uniform, scrambling at his collar.

* * *

Poe thinks, with the small part of his mind not entirely occupied by the slide of Luke’s lips against his own, that he had a plan. There was going to be talking involved. Maybe an invitation to dinner tomorrow — some of the restaurants Poe remembered from when he was nineteen and last in Hanna City must still exist.

But then Luke had answered the door, barefoot and sleepy looking and touchable.

And now, with Luke’s fingers slowly, slowly tangling into his curls, Poe’s not about to go anywhere, can’t think of anything more important to do with his lips and his tongue than press into the warmth of Luke’s mouth. Breaking their kisses to breathe — already nearly panting against Luke’s cheek — is close to impossible.

“Poe,” Luke murmurs into the space between them, his hands coming up to cup Poe’s face, cool metal on one side, callused skin on the other. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me, too,” Poe says back, sliding a hand up and down Luke’s side. “I’m so glad you’re here.” It’s nowhere near enough to express everything in Poe’s brain, but words seem so inadequate anyway, when they could be kissing.

Only just as Poe’s about to lean in again, Luke shuffles back a step. Poe feels the loss immediately.

“No, I just,” Luke squeezes Poe’s upper arm. “I want to look at you. For a second.”

“Okay,” Poe agrees. There's a pleasurable melting sensation in his chest as he stands under Luke’s gaze.

Luke brings his hand up, traces a finger lightly over Poe’s forehead, down to the lines at the corner of his eye, over his cheek to the corner of his mouth. As if maybe Luke’s trying to catalogue who Poe’s become, one physical change at a time.

Poe turns, to catch Luke’s fingers, press a soft kiss there. Luke smiles and a knot in his stomach Poe hadn’t even known was there dissipates.

“Do you — are you on-duty again soon?” Luke asks, sliding his hand down to smooth over Poe’s uniform collar in a soothing gesture.

“Not until tomorrow afternoon, local time,” Poe says.

Luke nods, eyes still fixed on the base of Poe’s throat. Then he glances sideways, setting his lower lip in a straight line, the same face he’d always made when he was about to say something he already thought was stupid or embarrassing. Poe had forgotten about that expression, even though it had given him years of amusement before that. Seeing it again is a delight, a buoyancy in Poe’s chest.

“Then maybe,” Luke says, dragging out the words, “you could stay here tonight?”

“Yeah?” Poe asks, biting his lip and then giving up and grinning.

“You just said you were off-duty tonight and tomorrow morning,” Luke says, sounding a little defensive.

“Since you’ve helped me evade Lieutenant Lamiria and she wasn’t able to force me into doing more interviews, yeah,” Poe agrees.

“You don’t have to,” Luke says, soft and rushed, eyebrows furrowed. “Stay, I mean.”

“I want to,” Poe cuts in quickly, reaching for Luke’s hand and tangling their fingers together. He’s not about to let this opportunity slip away because he was too busy being flippant. He’s missed sleeping beside Luke, curling into his warmth and being woken by his soft morning murmurs.

“Okay,” Luke says, a tentative smile flickering. “Good.”

Poe beams, because he’s utterly unable to do anything else. “Fantastic,” he agrees, swinging their linked hands back and forth a little.

Luke gives him back that smile that means he’s trying to keep from laughing. “Do you need anything from your quarters?” He frowns thoughtfully. “You’ll need something to sleep in.”

“I mean —” Poe begins, grinning. His blood is thrumming.

“Poe!” Luke says, biting down on his smile now, a little scandalized note in his voice. “You can’t leave tomorrow in the same wrinkled dress uniform you had on today. This place is swarming in press.”

“Why? Are you planning on wrinkling it?” Poe asks, tugging Luke over by the hand. He’s sure he must look ridiculous, his smile too wide, but he’s almost giddy from touch.

Luke slides an arm around Poe's waist, and hides his face against Poe’s neck, his shoulders shaking in quiet laughter, and all of that’s wonderful, too.

They disentangle eventually so Poe can head back to his quarters to shed his dress uniform and gather his things. He tries to hurry — there’s the slim but non-zero chance that if he gets back at the right time that he could get in the shower with Luke, press him up against the steam-warmed tile and kiss him — but he’s tired and puzzled by the sink. Sadly, by the time he returns, Luke’s already stepping out of the ‘fresher in his soft-looking sleepwear, damp hair curling at the nape of his neck. Poe had been hoping for a flash of shoulder blades, at least.

But it’s more than made up for when he gets to slide into bed beside Luke. It take a little while to settle, figure out where their limbs should go — they're less entangled than they could be — but Poe can feel the knob of Luke’s ankle pressing up softly against his calf and that loosens his muscles.

“Sleep well,” Luke whispers, blinking slowly until his eyes drift all the way shut.

“I might end up waking you up,” Poe confesses in a too fast mumble. “Just — just to be sure.”

“That’s okay,” Luke murmurs, pressing his fingers to Poe’s forearm for a moment, until the pressure softens and falls away.  

“Okay,” Poe echoes back. He closes his eyes, curls closer to Luke, and is asleep immediately.

* * *

Luke is aware, vaguely, of being too warm, but it’s not enough to shake off sleep for. He feels fuzzy and slow and a little puzzled by the insistent nearness of someone else’s hazy dream-thoughts. But it takes only a split-second for confusion to settle into recognition — that’s Poe, of course. The sudden relief that follows is what wakes Luke.

_I still know him. Despite everything, I still know him._

Luke opens his eyes, traces over the woodwork at the edge of room’s ceiling, following the repeating pattern. Beside him, Poe keeps sleeping, breath even and reassuring. He’s turned over, sprawled out on his stomach now, face pressed into the edge of the pillow, one arm tossed over Luke’s stomach.

The Poe beside him is different than the one who used to share Luke’s bed. There’s no way to deny that, when the frown lines between Poe’s eyebrows attest to years of impossible decisions and his hands carry already fading scars that Luke never knew him to have. But still, Luke remembers this, the way Poe was often a restless sleeper, tossing the blankets away with his shifting, but also somehow _dedicated_ , clinging to sleep stubbornly, as if he was just as committed to rest as he was to his X-Wing.

The light filtering in from outside is weak and bluish — it’s early. They have hours yet, hopefully.

Luke presses over a little closer towards Poe, reaches across himself to brush a hand over Poe’s hair. To prove to himself that this is all real, that they’re both here.

* * *

 

Waking up in the morning is a luxury. The bed’s soft and clean and Luke’s right there, lying on his back beside Poe.

“This is a nice bed,” Poe mumbles, nuzzling into Luke’s shoulder, fuzzily aware that his words are still sleep-slurred.

“Yeah?” Luke says, sounding too awake and too amused for anyone’s good. But he’s got his fingers combing through Poe’s hair where the base of his skull meets his neck and it’s enough to make Poe’s skin tingle pleasantly, minute sizzles of pleasure rippling down his spine.

“Mmhmm,” Poe agrees. “‘Sgot blankets and pillows and my guy. It’s a good bed.”

“Blankets _and_ pillows?” Luke echoes, voice warm. “Those are some discerning standards. How does anything live up to that?”

“It’s very difficult,” Poe mumbles, lips up against the fabric of Luke’s undershirt. Poe considers moving enough to push up Luke’s sleeve, so he can kiss the bare skin at the top of Luke’s arm, but decides it can wait a little longer. That drifting like this, warm and hazy and close, is enough for now.

Luke’s fingers in Poe’s hair slow and beneath his outstretched hand, Poe can feel Luke’s stomach muscles tensing.

“Luke?” Poe prompts, trailing his thumb back and forth over Luke’s stomach, where his ribs start.

Luke curls over toward Poe and presses a kiss to Poe’s forehead. “No, don’t worry. I was just — thinking,” he says. “You said,” he pauses, frowning. “Am I still? Your guy?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course you are,” Poe says, sleep falling off his shoulders with cold and startling immediacy. Surely they haven’t been talking past each other so completely for weeks. “I mean. If you want?”

Luke sits up, leaning over Poe, and his warm hands reach out to cradle Poe’s face. “I _do_ ,” he says quickly. “Of course. But. I’d understand, if you were still angry. You’d more than have the right.”

“I — yeah, I’ve been angry with you,” Poe says, sitting up, too, to get on even ground.“And I’m still grieving, and I know you are too. But I spent _seven years_ wanting to know you were even alive and now,” Poe’s hand is trembling; he only notices when Luke reaches out, the metal of his right hand surprisingly warm, “you’re here. So the only the thing I need to know is if you,” Poe says, taking a breath in, looking at their hands woven together and then up, to meet Luke’s eyes, “if you’re still in love with me.”

Luke gets up on his knees, shifting forward until he’s mostly in Poe’s lap. His fingers ghost up to trace over Poe’s jawline and Poe swallows. Luke’s eyes are a little unfocused, like when he’d be half there, pulling up weeds, and half tangled in working out the meaning of some Jedi text.

“I had no idea it was even possible to be in someone else’s dream,” Luke says, tracing his forefinger along the line of Poe’s cheekbone. Poe feels flushed. “That’s how much I wanted to see you.”

“Or maybe that's how much I wanted to see you,” Poe says, but for all that it sounds like a contradiction, an argument, he means it like agreement.

Luke leans forward, pressing a kiss to Poe’s eyebrow, lingering there, where Poe can feel his breath against his temple.

“The years I was gone, it was never that I didn’t want to see you,” Luke whispers. “I just — I _couldn’t_.”

“Okay,” Poe says, although it isn’t okay, it was never okay.

It was only happening and unavoidable and then Poe went to war, made himself keep his longing low and level, just another thread through his blood, because his mother taught him the galaxy was worth protecting. But now that Luke is here, warm and breathing in Poe’s arms, nothing about that longing is containable.

“As long as you’re back,” Poe says, tugging Luke closer into him, overcome with the need to close even the smallest distance between them.

Luke slides in towards Poe without protest, his knees bracketing Poe’s hips, one hand sliding down along Poe’s back, the other coming to rest in Poe’s hair, cradling the top of his neck. Poe presses his lips against Luke’s shoulder.

“I’m here,” Luke promises, soft.

Poe has to look up, pull away just enough to see Luke’s face. He’s smiling. Only faintly. Just the slightest upturn of his lips, an indulgent warmth in his eyes, but it’s enough, more than enough. Poe tightens his arms around Luke’s back, slipping one hand up along his spine beneath his shirt. Poe’s muscles, his nerves, the very cells of his body seem to be vibrating with all the years’ worth of kisses that only happened in Poe’s most heartbreaking, wonderful dreams. Poe leans in and tilts his face up, past ready to finally make them real.

“Wait,” Luke says, pressing two prosthetic fingers to Poe’s lips, breathy with something near laughter, his neck starting to flush.

“Wait?” Poe asks wildly, his fingers curling and uncurling against Luke's back.

“You said, you said you needed to know if I’m still in love with you,” Luke tells him, cupping his face. “ _Yes_. I just — I wanted to be clear. I want you to know. I love you. Of course I love you.”

Poe can feel his rapid heartbeat in his chest and in his throat. He is as dizzyingly in love as he was a decade ago, when he’d told Luke in a whispered late night torrent of words, “I want to live here,” tracing his hand down Luke’s breastbone. “I want to live in your bones and I want to carry you in my rib cage. That's what it feels like.”

Now, here, Poe can only plead, “Kiss me.”

And Luke does, tipping his face down to catch Poe’s lips with his own. It’s soft and light, almost hesitant and not _enough_ , like Luke’s still leaving room for Poe to pull back. But Poe has been starving for this, so he leans into up into the kiss, coaxing apart Luke’s slightly chapped lips. Luke makes a noise at the back of his throat and beneath Poe’s fingers, the muscles of Luke’s back loosen, even as he leans in.

“I’ve wanted — ” Poe gasps, unable to even finish his thought because Luke's lips are right there, his to kiss. Now that he can, he must.

“Yes,” Luke says, when they part.

Poe swallows the end of the word, chasing Luke's tongue, lingering on his lower lip. Luke makes a little humming noise, his warm fingers stroking Poe’s shoulders and the back of his neck, then wandering down the notches at the top of his spine.

Poe only pulls back to pant against the line of Luke’s jaw. “Since the second I saw you on that  holocall,” he says against Luke’s ear, pressing their cheeks together, feeling Luke’s hands traveling restless over his shoulder blades. His skin is alive with the sensation. “You looked looked so pale still and I was so fucking worried and all I wanted was this.”

“I know, I _know_ ,” Luke says, tangling his fingers in Poe’s curls and tipping Poe’s face upward — and Poe’s missed that, too, the faint sting of Luke's metal hand tugging at his hair, how vivid Luke's eyes are this close — drawing Poe back into a long, desperate kiss. “I’ve wanted this, too. So much,” he mumbles, so close his lips brush against the side of Poe’s nose, part of his cheek, his heavy breath warm and welcome against Poe’s skin.

Poe tucks his face into the side of Luke’s neck — he always liked it when Poe kissed down along his throat, would gasp or tighten his grip in Poe’s hair, so Poe had like to think of this spot as his, in some way — and tries to get back his breath back.

He can feel the rapid rise and fall of Luke’s chest and it’s such an astounding thought, that he can still do this, be the cause of Luke’s breathlessness. Poe can’t help but grin, trace his lips down along a tendon until he can leave lingering kisses along Luke’s collarbone.

“I love you,” Poe says, savoring the words and the solidity of Luke in his arms.

Luke threads his fingers into Poe’s curls and Poe’s spine tingles with the sensation and the remembered pleasure of it.

“I love you, too,” Luke echoes. And then, in a whisper, “Poe, _please_.”

Poe leans in again, capturing Luke’s lips, because he’s here and he’s asking and Poe _can_ , now. “Yes,” he murmurs back. “Yes.”

* * *

Luke wakes up with Poe’s legs tangled with his the next morning and the next and the next. But they are at war and the war will not wait. Luke does not get nearly enough nights of Poe and his kisses, warm and insistent, in his bed.

The First Order is advancing and not at all pleased that the Republic and the Resistance have joined arms. The Fleet is determined to push them back beyond the borders of Republic space and Leia’s always been a believer in aggressive negotiations.

The news ripples out: the first joint mission for the Republic and the Resistance will be an assault on a First Order weapons stockpile just on the edge of Republic space. Luke can see it, the potential history that will unscroll from here. It whispers to him in sleep, tempts him toward distraction during meditation sessions with Rey — _there will come blood; there will come liberation and strife and hunger; or, there will not._

Yoda, Luke thinks, wasn't wrong about that. The future has always haunted Luke, pressed at him, presented itself as if it were an engine that could be fixed, if Luke could just make himself into the right tool. Luke had been a boy from a planet where people needed to make their own water: of course he'd thought with the right determination he could build the galaxy brighter. Anything worth having needed to be chased.

He'd been wrong and, occasionally, he'd been right. But either way, the future had always come about the same way. One foot in front of the other until the horizon unfolded itself.

That is how Luke brings himself across the starbase’s hangar bay, for the first of many partings (or at least Luke hopes for it to be the first of many; war makes for perverse wishes). Even in the crowd, Poe’s easy to find, his Force presence a familiar warmth. As Luke gets closer, he can hear Poe and Beebee Eight bickering.

“Beebee!” Poe scolds up to his astromech droid, already in position behind the cockpit of his new Republic X-Wing. “Don’t be rude to the mechanics. They’re just doing their jobs, making sure everything’s fixed up like you like.”

Beebee is entirely unsatisfied by Poe’s reprimand.

“I know you like Rose best,” Poe says, hands fisted on his hips, “but we don’t get to hog her.”

Beebee spots Luke and makes a mournful sound, attempting to convey how _deeply_ unjust it is for Beebee to have to share. Poe whirls around, a smile curling up his face immediately.

“Hi,” Luke says, too soft for all the bustle around them.

“Came to see me off, huh?” Poe asks, drawing closer. He’s in his flight suit, crash webbing already on.  

“Yes,” Luke says, aware somewhere in his senses that some version of their conversation is playing out in endless combinations and alterations across the hangar bay. It’s overhung with emotion. Luke reaches up to Poe’s cheek, traces his thumb over the line of his cheekbone.

“Good,” Poe says, pressing into Luke’s hand a little.

It’s not a word Luke would apply here. “I wanted to be sure we said goodbye,” Luke tells him, drawing his hand away now, letting it trail down Poe’s arm to Poe’s hand, which immediately captures his own. “Properly.”

Poe swallows, glancing down for a moment, and nods. Then his eyes go bright.

“Well, in that case. Kiss for luck, sweetheart?” Poe asks, biting his lip and immediately lapsing into his irrepressible smile.

Luke folds his lips together to keep from immediately smiling back, though he does a bad job of it. “We’re still doing this?” he asks.

“It’s tradition!” Poe says, placing a hand over his heart and leaning back, as if affronted. It would work better if he weren’t still holding Luke’s hand. “You have to. Pilots are very superstitious, you know.”

“No, really?” Luke asks, squeezing Poe’s hand a little tighter. He’s not ready to let go.

Poe nods, his face the picture of earnestness, swinging their joined hands lightly. “Traditions are important.”

Luke leans in, presses a soft, lingering kiss to Poe’s cheek and doesn’t pull away. He just rests his forehead against Poe’s temple, breathing in.

Luke doesn’t ask him to come home, doesn’t ask him to be careful, because he won’t ask Poe to make promises he might be forced to break. “Do good,” Luke whispers, instead. “I love you.”

Poe nods — Luke feels rather than sees the movement. “I love you, too,” Poe says back, just for the space between them.

Then Poe turns his head just slightly, captures Luke’s mouth for a single, intent kiss. Luke can feel the press of his hand against Luke’s back, wants to follow the light pressure until he’s molded to Poe. But instead, Luke takes a steadying breath and steps back, keeping his hand in Poe’s until it’s impossible. Poe’s grip on his hand tightens for a moment, before their hands drop away.

Luke nods, trying to put all the certainty he has in Poe into it, and then turns around and starts to walk away.

He’s still only a few ships closer to the doors when Poe calls, “Hey, Luke!”

Luke turns around, to find Poe standing by his ship, overly casual, thumbs tucked into his belt.

“I was just doing the math,” Poe continues, hints of a sly smile emerging. “And it’s been kind of a while since we went on a date, huh?”

Luke licks his lips, looks sideways — there’s Jess Pava, checking her X-Wing’s controls and Rose by the side of her ship; beyond them, there’s Finn, standing in front of the command ship he’s about to board, holding Rey’s hand; above the hangar bay is Leia, watching from the base command center — and then back to Poe, smiling in return. Even though he’s too far away to see Poe’s laugh lines, the thread of warm humor Luke can sense from him is enough to make Luke want to laugh.

“Kind of a while, yeah,” Luke agrees.

“Okay, well, we’ll have to take care of that,” Poe says. “So. You and me,” he points. “Dinner sometime?”

Luke does laugh then, just a short burst, because his chest feels liquid with affection. “Sure,” he says. “That sounds good.”

“It’s a date, then,” Poe replies, with a wink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read! And to those of you who commented and left kudos, I'm incredibly grateful. This story started out as a concept in late December 2017, not that long after I saw TLJ and took more than a year to finally get this done. It's a distinctly _weird_ story and so the support it has found is incredibly dear to me. 
> 
> Anand Vivek Taneja's ethnography _Jinnealogy_ and Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey were both books that helped this story along in so many ways and that are also incredible reads. Nathasa Trethewey's Monument is beautiful and heartrending as well and helped me bring things to a close. Consider picking one of them up! 
> 
> And finally, thank you again to Sassysnowperson, without whom this fic absolutely wouldn't exist.


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